Los Angeles, 1948. In William Leisner’s novella Meet John Doe, LAPD officer Bob Neville is called in to assist federal agents on a case involving the monsters introduced in The Big Dark, which featured private detective Henry Shaw, Neville’s former partner. As Neville digs deeper into this new case, he begins to wonder if some of these so-called monsters might not be so monstrous after all.

Tales of the Weird World War is a shared-world idea I came up with and further developed with my partner in crime, Bill Leisner. These first two stories set the stage for a world increasingly altered by the mysterious appearances of various beings and creatures of unknown origin. The excerpt below is the opening of the story.




Meet John Doe

“Holy Christ, what was that thing?”
       Bob Neville stepped down and sat beside the younger cop, perched on the lip of the beach house porch. Both the sky and the ocean were a bright clear blue, but a chill October wind had kept away any casual beachgoers, and the two Los Angeles Police Department officials were the only living souls around . . . or at least, now they were. “Honestly, we haven’t come up with a good name for them yet,” Neville said as he brought one of his big hands down on the other man’s slumped shoulder. Though he was doing an admirable job of suppressing his horror, Neville could feel the way his whole body was vibrating inside his uniform.
       The younger cop—corran, the silver name tag on his left breast pocket read—turned to look at him, his eyes perfect circles. “You mean, there are more of them?” he asked.
       “Officially, no,” Neville told him. He glanced back over his shoulder, through the small cottage’s front door, into the still dimness inside. “Officially, this one doesn’t exist either. What you found inside there was a coyote. . . .”



All content (unless otherwise noted) copyright Scott Pearson. Meet John Doe copyright William Leisner.
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