A Scare at Bedtime: Waster

WASTER A Scare at Bedtime Ruairi Murphy is a waste of space. At twenty-four, he's never worked a day in his life, content to spend his days at the bookies and his nights at the pub, all funded by his mother's blood, sweat, and tears. Kathleen Murphy works three grueling cleaning jobs, her arthritic hands scrubbing other people's dirt from dawn until midnight. She does it all to support her son, asking nothing in return except that he stay. Because after her husband Michael vanished without a trace six months ago, Ruairi is all she has left. But Kathleen doesn't know the truth. She doesn't know that Michael never left home that Tuesday morning in May. She doesn't know that his body has been rotting in the attic above her head for six months, hidden in the wedding chest that once held her veil and his boutonniere. She doesn't know that her beloved son is the one who put him there. Ruairi has found the perfect arrangement, a mother too broken to refuse him, too loving to question him, too desperate for family to let him go. He's bled her dry financially and emotionally, and when she can finally take no more, when she discovers the horrible truth hidden in the attic, he watches with cold calculation as she makes her final, desperate choice. But some debts can't be escaped. Some sins demand payment. Three weeks after Kathleen's funeral, a priest comes knocking. Father Brennan brings a message from beyond the grave, a mother's last desperate attempt to save her son's soul. But Ruairi is beyond saving. And the thing wearing the priest's face has not come to offer redemption. It has come to collect. A chilling tale of toxic family dynamics, unforgivable sins, and supernatural justice, "Waster" explores what happens when a mother's unconditional love meets a son's limitless cruelty. Perfect for readers who like their horror served with psychological depth and moral reckoning. "Some people waste their whole lives. Ruairi Murphy wasted everyone else's too. Now it's time to pay the bill."