Read an Excerpt from James Newman’s ODD MAN OUT

Summer camp can be the time of your life, but for one cabin of bunkmates, it will be a time that will haunt their lives forever in James Newman's Odd Man Out. The recent release from the author of The Wicked takes readers back to a sinister summer in 1989, and we have an excerpt from the coming-of-age horror novel for Daily Dead readers to check out right now.

Read the Odd Man Out excerpt below, and to learn more about Newman's written works, visit his Amazon page.

Odd Man Out synopsis: "WELCOME TO THE BLACK MOUNTAIN CAMP FOR BOYS!

Summer,1989. It is a time for splashing in the lake and exploring the wilderness, for nine teenagers to bond together and create friendships that could last the rest of their lives.

But among this group there is a young man with a secret--a secret that,in this time and place,is unthinkable to his peers.

When the others discover the truth,it will change each of them forever. They will all have blood on their hands.

ODD MAN OUT is a heart-wrenching tale of bullies and bigotry,a story that explores what happens when good people don't stand up for what's right. It is a tale of how far we have come . . . and how far we still have left to go."

About James Newman: "James Newman is the author of a diverse selection of horror and suspense tales, dark fiction told with a distinct Southern voice and more often than not with a hint of pitch-black humor. His published work includes the novels MIDNIGHT RAIN, THE WICKED, ANIMOSITY, and UGLY AS SIN, and the collection PEOPLE ARE STRANGE. He has also written one nonfiction book, a love letter to his favorite genre called 666 HAIR-RAISING HORROR MOVIE TRIVIA QUESTIONS.

STILL WATERS, a short Christian-themed horror film based on Newman's original screenplay, is now available for purchase at www.tackytiefilms.com. Up next are the novels DOG DAYS O' SUMMER and SCAPEGOAT (co-written w/Mark Allan Gunnells and Adam Howe, respectively)."

Excerpt from Odd Man Out:

“THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT.”

-- sign found in Jonestown, Guyana, site of the Peoples Temple tragedy (Nov. 18, 1978)

Two nights ago I had a nightmare more vivid than any I can remember. I awoke to an almost suffocating sadness unlike anything I had experienced since my parents died in a car accident when I was in college. We had argued the last time we spoke. That was twenty-three years ago. Now, just several hours before Pastor McCormick planned to meet with the leaders of Troop 441 to inform them of our church’s decision, the same profound sense of regret descended upon me that I had felt the night after my parents’ funeral.

I dreamed of two boys sitting in a tree house. Boys with bloody thumbs.

One of them was a chubby ten-year-old in a Star Wars shirt, with a mouth full of braces. The other was a skinny kid with straw-colored hair that he was constantly pushing out of his eyes.

“It’s official. We’re blood brothers. But don’t worry, D-man. It’ll be our secret.”

This time, when he pushed aside his bangs, I saw a word on his forehead. A vile word, scrawled in black Magic Marker on sunburned skin.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as we held our thumbs to an old beach towel to stop the bleeding. “I never thought they would take it that far.”

He made a farting sound with his lips. “You had to fit in. You wouldn’t want them to turn on you.”

There was no judgment in his tone. He was simply making a statement.

On the floor between us now, instead of the bloody towel, lay a hammer. Its handle had a green rubber grip with a square of sticky price-tag residue at the bottom.

I remembered that hammer well. Remembered what we had done with it.

Wesley picked it up, handed it to me. “You know what you have to do.”

I awoke with a gasp. For the briefest of moments, I smelled hot dogs cooking on a grill, citronella candles burning on a warm summer evening. I smelled the sweat of eight young men cooped up together in one small room for too long. I smelled blood. Gasoline.

Then there was only the strawberry scent of my wife’s favorite shampoo. She lay beside me, one hand on my chest, her long ginger curls tickling my neck.

“I’m sorry . . . . ”

I flinched, realized I had said it aloud.

I listened to the rhythm of Patricia’s breathing for a few seconds to make sure she was still asleep. Gently removed her hand from my chest, rolled over to face the wall.

I thought about that hateful word written on my blood brother’s forehead. An insult my friends and I used to hurl at one another several times a day. We didn’t understand that words can be as dangerous as the box-cutter Wesley and I had used to slice our thumbs. Words cut in a different way. They leave scars all the same.

I wished I could cry. Wished I hadn’t been raised by a guy who instilled in me from a very young age the conviction that real men don’t advertise their emotions.

As I tried to drift off again, I knew it would be easier if I could cry myself to sleep.

I remembered how Wesley had done that at least once during our stay at the Black Mountain Camp for Boys.

I remembered sneaking my headphones out of the backpack beside my bed, pushing PLAY on my Walkman to drown out the sound of his suffering.

* * *

“Watch where you’re going, fag. You almost made me drop my clipboard.”

From the moment I first met Nathan Ginyard, I knew he wouldn’t be my favorite bunkmate that summer.

He was a month shy of turning seventeen, not quite two years older than me, when all of this happened. A tall boy with hair so blond it was almost white, he always wore gym shorts and basketball jerseys (his favorite team: the Celtics). During those seven days I spent with him I heard him brag more than once about how college recruiters had been watching him play hoops since middle school, although one of the others in our group -- a guy who attended the same school as him – claimed Nathan rode the bench more than he touched the ball.

“What’s your name?” he asked me as I stepped off the bus. He stood by the door with a clipboard, a pencil, and a bully’s smirk that I would soon learn rarely left his face.

“It’s, um, Dennis. Dennis Mu --”

“Uhhh, guh, D-Dennis,” he mocked me. “Spit it out.”

“Dennis Munce. My name’s Dennis Munce.”

He checked my name off his sheet, took a moment to look me up and down as if he had the power to send me back home if he didn’t approve of what he saw. Which would have been fine with me.

“Nathan Ginyard.” He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of one hand, offered me the same hand. We shook. “I’m just yanking your chain. Everybody’s meeting in the mess hall in ten.”

He pointed with his pencil to a row of nine log cabins about a hundred yards away. They sat on a rise between thick woodland and a lake to my right that went on as far as I could see. Eight of the cabins were identical except for a big green number painted on each door -- “1” through “7” from left to right, with the last one labeled “SHOWERS” – while the building in the middle was four times the size of the others. Its windows reflected the morning sun, the rippling waters of the lake, and the Great Smoky Mountains beyond. A trio of boys my age talked excitedly as they climbed the steps to the covered porch.

I hefted my duffel bag and walked on, gravel crunching beneath my feet. The smell of diesel fuel made me sneeze, but the scent of fresh mountain air took its place as I left the bus behind. From the edge of the woods a squirrel watched me approach until I got too close. Two vehicles were parked next to a picnic table between the mess hall and the lake: a black and gold Firebird, and a late-model Jeep Cherokee, dark blue with faux wood paneling. A kayak was strapped to the Cherokee’s roof. A large tackle-box and several fishing poles lay on the ground behind the vehicles.

On the far side of the lake, a woodpecker’s frantic rhythm echoed through the valley like someone firing off an automatic weapon every few seconds.

Behind me, Nathan Ginyard said to the next boy who stepped off the bus, “Look at this loser. What’s your name, loser?”

“Wesley Westmore,” replied a voice I recognized, though I did not realize it at first because I hadn’t heard it in years.

* * *

I had begged my parents not to make me go. It wasn’t because I was an introvert, as I made friends easily in those days. I loved my comic books and Nintendo, but I enjoyed the great outdoors as well. Simply put, there were a hundred other ways I would have preferred to spend my summer vacation.

It felt like I was being punished for something I didn’t do, I argued. I was an unexceptional though far from terrible student. I had never been in any sort of trouble. That summer of my fifteenth year I had sipped a beer only once (I didn’t like it). And I was technically still a virgin.

But my enrollment at the Black Mountain Camp for Boys had nothing to do with my behavior.

Whether I liked it or not, I was part of a focus group.

This was to be the camp’s first season under new management. Since my father worked for an insurance company that represented the owners – and because Mom and Dad wished to fly to Europe that summer for a second honeymoon -- I was one of thirteen boys who were invited to the camp for several weeks before it opened to the public. Our objective: to report back what we did or didn’t like about the experience, and to offer suggestions that would ensure a fair return-on-investment for parents who would soon pay to send their sons away instead of spending time with them. It was implied that we had won something special, though I suspected early on that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be there. On that first day we grumbled as if we were back in school and our teacher had assigned homework before a holiday, as the counselors passed out a two-page questionnaire. We were expected to fill them out before boarding the bus to return home three weeks later.

We never got around to pencil-whipping those forms.

The last time I saw one it was covered in blood and feces.