Title: The Devil's Garden
Author: Jack Bumgardner
Publisher: NineStar Press
Cover Artist: Mandy Porto
Release Date: 10/21/2025
Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex
Pairing: NB/NB
Length: 366
Genre: Contemporary, Crime, enemies to lovers, hurt/comfort, poetry, small town, law enforcement, mental illness, prison, fugitives, road trip
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Description
Otho Linker is a gay man living in a small Southern town. Long abandoned by his family, he refused to leave the area and subsequently became a police officer. His neighbor, Wheeler Yost, is an older gay man who has watched over Otho for years, serving as a father figure and mentor. To Otho, Wheeler is the family he always needed, and he loves him unconditionally.
When an abandoned house in the woods suddenly explodes, Otho is called in to assist the two detectives on the force. This appears to be just another meth-head disaster until a body is found incinerated inside. As Otho investigates the case, he quickly identifies at least one suspect who could have been involved.
As he learns more about the suspect, Russell Snell, he also realizes he has feelings for the man. Then, in the midst of the ongoing chaos of the investigation, Wheeler passes away, leaving Otho totally alone. With nothing to lose, he decides to go on the lam with Russell, despite the doubts he still harbors about Russell’s involvement in the child’s death. Will he find love, or will he find heartache? Only time will tell.
Excerpt
The Devil’s Garden
Jack Bumgardner © 2025
All Rights Reserved
The car dusted the dirt road and hit the macadam just as Sherrill’s distinctive nasal drawl squawked through the radio. Otho quickly grabbed the speaker. “Linker.”
“Hey, hon, house fire at 2954 County Road Six.”
“House fire? Is the Volunteer Fire Department there?”
Sherrill laughed. “Well, hon, they got there as fast as they could from Wahnell County. Anyway, it looks like a head-house burn. Could hear the explosion all the way up here. Jim’s already at the scene, but he needs backup.”
“Roger. On my way,” he said, speeding down the road. He knew the address well, having busted a couple of rings of meth heads there in the past few years. The unfortunate layout of the town consisted of acres and acres of forest lands dotted with abandoned houses built by millworkers who valued the parcel of land they built on more than their homes, as evidenced by choosing to bury them in woods.
Then, as the families moved or died off, their houses became magnets for anyone looking to mix the chemicals that burned through their brains at lightning speed, turning high school heroes into hulks of toothless addicts and school beauties into scab-faced streetwalkers.
Otho traveled down County Road Six, ignoring the stretches of nothingness and wondering if the culprits were familiar, any faces he’d known as a kid. It had happened once or twice, but the meth heads he knew were too tweaked out of their minds to recognize him.
And, in a way, he was glad to remain anonymous to the people of his past.
Yet the fifteen-year-old in him sometimes wanted them to realize who was behind the badge and see his choice.
Tremendous plumes of gray smoke curled up above the tree line, and Otho grabbed the face mask on the passenger seat just as he pulled in behind Jim Lumsden’s patrol car. When he jumped out, he pulled the mask on, but it didn’t stop his eyes and nose from running as the chemicals from the explosion poisoned the air.
Jim turned around and greeted Otho with a half wave. His face and eyes were covered with the new plastic personal protection gear he had just ordered, making Otho wonder why he hadn’t received his yet. Responding to head-house explosions had become as routine to him as they had to his captain, yet rank was ingrained in the Temperly Police Department, just as it was everywhere else.
Jim waved him away from the scene, and they trudged down the skinny driveway until they were almost at the road. Then he pulled his mask off, coughed and said, “Sherill tell you what was going on?”
“Looks like just another head-house burn,” Otho said.
Jim nodded and looked back toward the fire. Orange walls of flames viciously devoured the plain little clapboard house as the firemen hosed it down, doing their usual miraculous job of keeping the flames from spreading to the tinderbox of pine trees that surrounded the structure. The Wahnell County Fire Inspector’s car roared past them.
“Glad Grace Twofeather’s here,” Jim said. “When this starts to cool down, she can tell us where the flashpoint was. Anyway, son, I’m glad you came. With all the horseshit budget cuts we’ve had lately, it’s hard to find backup for anything.”
“No problem, sir. But I’m wondering why you responded? Weren’t Brady or Cruickshank around?”
Jim shook his head and twisted his mouth as if he was trying to keep certain words from flying free. He looked around as if he was searching for spies in the trees, and he shrugged his round shoulders a few times. His stocky build and shiny pate cast him as a stereotypical Good Ole Boy, but his eyes shone with a deep intelligence. So he knew which officers were worth sending to troublesome calls. And he also knew which ones to send to monitor the Dairy-Rite ice cream stand, one of the few booming businesses left in town.
“Anyway, believe it or not, we’ve got some info on this place, unlike the other houses. Old Lady Snell lives in the area,” Jim said, nodding up the road.
The heat and smell were getting to Otho, so he pulled his wet shirt away from his chest and shuffled his feet. When he realized Jim was lost in thought, he said, “Sorry, sir, but what has Mrs. Snell got to do with this explosion?”
Jim looked at him. “Someone was seen running to her house by Bonnie Ingram as she drove past the fire.” He paused. “I know Mrs. Snell has a boy. Named Russell, I think. We’ve busted him on minor pot stuff.”
“Russell Snell?” Otho said.
Jim coughed more gunk out of his lungs. “Yep. I’m sure you’ve run into him whenever you cleaned out this shithole before. Haven’t you?”
The odd thing was that he hadn’t. But the name picked at his memory.
“No, sir,” he said. “But I’ll get on over to Mrs. Snell’s house.”
Jim nodded and began to walk down the driveway toward his car. Suddenly he stopped and turned to Otho. The smoke from the house fire was drafting down like a dark hand reaching to grab him but Jim just walked through it, wiping his eyes. “Listen, son. I could be mistaken. Bonnie Ingram’s been a little excitable lately, especially since Joe left her. But at least we got a name. Okay?”
“No problem, sir.” Otho got back into his car, jerked the mask off and strained to find Mrs. Snell’s house. He hated questioning the older residents of town since most of them met him with a government-resenting sneer or a squinty-eyed quizzical look. But the name Snell was still intriguing to him, so he took off down the road. Rolling down his window, he greedily gasped for fresh air, the last thing his hometown had in abundance, and he hoped her son was paying her an overdue visit today.
Within minutes Otho was in front of her house. He decided he would park on the narrow shoulder of County Road Six and walk up to the structure. That way Russell Snell wouldn’t hear the motor and shoot out the back door. And Otho wouldn’t be trapped in her slender driveway.
The house was a duplicate of the one that had just morphed into ash and smoke nearby. Except Mrs. Snell’s house was newer with a more recent veneer of aluminum siding and freshly painted green shutters. It stood as an anomaly to the other clapboard homes in the area, and Otho took note of its condition as he approached the front porch and punched the black dot of a doorbell.
He waited to hear someone amble toward the door or even a dusty shuffle but there was only silence. VFD clatter and shouting reached him from the fire next door as he noticed the houses were closer than he had first realized. That fact troubled him, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it as another explosion travelled through the air, and he found himself instinctively ducking on the porch.
Once he realized that the fire department was getting everything under control and heard the hiss as their hoses sprayed the flames, Otho stood up and pressed the doorbell again. This time he put his ear to the door to try to discern any voices or footsteps. Nothing.
“Temperly Police, ma’am!” he hollered, now tapping on the wooden door, its ancient grain surfacing through the tired paint. A quick glance through the tattered sheers on the windows showed a dark house with only the outline of furniture and a large rug on the floor.
Russell Snell. Why don’t I know that name? He walked off the porch and inspected all around the shoebox house. He couldn’t find anything amiss—no windows busted, no back door flung open. Not even any footprints in the backyard. Otho reached his car and took one more look. Just another poor widow’s house.
But no. The place and its possible inhabitants held an answer to something and not just a possible sloppy meth head arsonist or his poor mother. If the house next door was just ending its life, this one had something to do with it.
Its stubborn existence, standing pristine beside the rubble of its twin, held a sort of malice. A remorseless killing.
Otho got into his car and notified Sherill that he was on his way back to the station. She told him to hurry since it was potluck day in the snack room, then disconnected before he could ask her about the house on County Road Six or the woman who owned it. Or the man whose name was echoing in the memories he had shut down years ago. He took a breath and cursed, though he wasn’t sure why.
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Meet the Author
Jack Bumgardner is a Southerner by birth and a Westerner by choice. Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, he graduated from Stetson University in Florida.
He is the author of the novella Underneath It All and has had several short stories published in literary magazines. He also co-scripted a radio drama, “The Fire Talker.”
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