“No Bones, Just Skin” published in Night Terrors Vol. 25

My obscure cryptid horror story No Bones, Just Skin leads off the new Night Terrors Vol. 25 anthology by Scare Street. It’s about a brother and sister who have a terrifying encounter with an abúhukü, a rainforest demon known for dissolving the bones of its prey and leaving the empty skin behind.

Content warning: mild gore

Manuel’s older sister, Liliana, stood next to him, looking up at the body hanging high in the tree overhead. The carcass was little more than a shriveled husk of a man, a wrinkled bag of skin draped boneless and formless across the jungle’s dense lattice of vines and branches. It was almost as if the man had been turned into a garment, as if someone had slit him down the back, extracted his skeleton, then tossed him carelessly into the tree like an old bathrobe.