horror

Devil’s Night by Curtis M. Lawson

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Devil’s Night is a collection focusing primarily on the myths and urban legends emerging from the darkness and the destructive tendencies of people during the Devil’s Night eruptions of violence and arson in Detroit. It would be easy to write off Curtis M. Lawson’s short story collection as an outlet for bleak and cynical tales of horror lurking below the surface of those actions, but it would only be telling a fraction of the story. There is a deep and abiding love for Detroit embedded within these tales. Lawson’s is a love that doesn’t cling with shallow superficiality to the glory days of the motor city or Motown but embraces the painful and often ugly reality that coincides with those things that once set Detroit apart from the rest of America.
In these pages, you’ll certainly find stories of the Nain Rouge, The Pig Lady, and other urban legends that are specific to that region, but you’ll also find the far more sinister forces at work, racism, predatory capitalism, and addiction. In Lawson’s Devil’s Night, you’ll meet a city that has a nebulous mind and spirit of its own, one poisoned by generations of residents and the corruption they brought with them. You’ll discover a Detroit where toxic, venomous plantlife flourishes beneath the surface, ready to flay alive any who stumble across it, poisoning those who survive with unquenchable hate and anger.
In Trash-Fire Stories and The Work of the Devil, we meet children who have experienced every tragedy life can throw at them, each event preceded by the appearance of the Nain Rouge, presaging the bad things soon to come.
In D20, we learn that two brothers attempting to escape the cruel reality of their lives through a role-playing game might be awakening a force to affect the real changes they so desperately need.
Devil’s Tongue and The Exorcism of Detroit, Michigan both take us to a place where we catch glimpses of the underlying evil that poisons the city and turns the residents into the monsters they’ve become as Devil’s Night arrives. The latter tale providing the reader with a certain sense of hope and faith that things can be better.
Through Hell for One Kiss shares a haunting love story that proves to be a quite literal haunting for those caught up in the annual remembrance of the ghosts involved.
A Night of Art and Excess showcases the awfulness and depravity of human nature and greed, without any supernatural scapegoat to assuage the guilt.
No One Leaves the Butcher Shop tells the story of a pair of arsonists who stumble across something far worse than homeless people encamped within the building they’ve been hired to burn.
The Graveyard of Charles Robert Swede takes us on a journey with a monstrous serial killer who learns–as the line between our world and another are blurred–the truth behind why he’s chosen the burial site he’s utilized for the disposal of his victims.
We discover that even the devil has standards and sometimes a more stringent moral code than the clergy in This City Needs Jesus.
There’s more within this collection than solely the stories I’ve referenced, but these are the ones that stood out the most for me. Interspersed through the book are numerous illustrations that are positively magnificent. It was these illustrations that first brought this collection by Lawson to my attention, and as awesome as they might be, they’re no more spectacular than the stories they reference.
I wish I had read this collection in the final days of October because this book is so perfect for reading at that time of year. If you have a chance to read this for the first time, I recommend doing so at that time. You will not regret the decision.

Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell

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Felix Blackwell managed to craft a captivating and unsettling narrative that digs its way under the reader’s skin. Like many of the best horror stories, Stolen Tongues envelops the reader in an atmosphere that conveys a sense of both helplessness and fear. As the characters and their plight become more three-dimensional and fleshed out, the threatening force looming in the shadows becomes more unreal and difficult to comprehend. That alien and unfamiliar threat mingling with the all-too-real lives of the protagonists it imperils propels this story beyond the realm of casual, easily dismissed horror literature.
When Felix and his fiance, Faye, begin their romantic getaway at her parents’ cabin in the Colorado Rockies, there’s no way they could have anticipated the disquieting experience that would greet them. If they’d only known the sinister history of Pale Peak, the cabin that rested there in the dark forests, and the way that past resonated within Faye’s dreams and psychology, they certainly would not have stayed.
What unfolds from there is a feverish and unreal sequence of events that follows the couple from waking life into their dreams, influencing their relationships, and impacting everyone who seeks to help. And as the terror escalates, the reader can’t help but wonder if anyone will walk away without being led into the darkness by the creature speaking with stolen tongues.
Growing up in and near the Black Hills of South Dakota and having spent a good deal of my life in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho, I feel like Blackwell captured the beauty and isolation of the environment. Just as importantly, he captured the way these mountain forests can play tricks on people unaccustomed to such places.
As someone who has spent most of his life straddling the outskirts of Indigenous cultures, I appreciated Blackwell’s attempt to avoid exhausted and exhausting tropes while incorporating elements of those cultures in his story. My former step-mother and half-sister are Lakota, my ex-wife, multiple ex-girlfriends, numerous friends, and my teenage daughter as well. This book doesn’t treat the Indigenous characters as overly romanticized token characters, but it does treat them with respect and obvious appreciation for the history of North America before the arrival of European colonizers.

The Breed by Ash Ericmore

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The Breed begins with Theo seeking refuge, hoping for nothing more than to use a phone to call his mother, his bike broken down in the rain. When he knocks at the door of Cullis House, his belief that he’s found a refuge is short-lived.
Ericmore leaps ahead a matter of decades and we join two friends hoping to stay at Cullis House in the middle of their backpacking trip. Sore feet and the attention of a sleazy guest already in attendance are soon the least of their concerns.
This story could be adapted to serve as a Hellraiser sequel with only minimal alteration required. One needs only think of the house in place of the Lament Configuration. Ericmore crafts a grotesque, sexually-charged nightmare that even Barker would be hard-pressed to deny as a suitable abbatoir for his playthings to explore.

The Doze Volume 2: Concrete Christmas by Drew Stepek

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Our second installment of The Doze cements the character as the Godless League answer to The Hulk or The Thing. Much like those two Marvel Comics characters, The Doze is a tragic figure, transformed into a monster through no fault of his own, plagued and motivated by loss and betrayal.
Seeking vengeance against the man who manipulated him and took advantage of his illiteracy, ultimately destroying his family, The Doze sees an opportunity with the Christmas parade celebrating the new Globoshame development that’s arisen where his home used to be. As Stepek splashes the pages with blood and concrete, with over-the-top carnage, we find ourselves thrilled that The Doze might finally achieve the revenge he deserves.
Unfortunately, he’s not the only one with some surprises in store, and Stepek leaves us with a cliffhanger ending that will surely leave readers waiting with tingles of anticipation to see where he takes us next.
As with the five previous Godless League installments, I can’t help but find myself wishing that Stepek, Baltisberger, and Leitner will find a comic book artist capable of converting these tales into one giant graphic novel. It would be amazing to see these tales on display in the format most fitting, possibly even finding a new audience in the process.

The second installment of The Doze series was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Godless League #6 (The Doze – "Concrete Christmas") by Drew Stepek

Distinctly I Remember by The Professor

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Distinctly I Remember further cements The Professor as the master of what can only be described as splattergothic literature. Even if he had any peers in this genre, they would be hard-pressed to approach the passionate embrace of topics considered taboo and the literary flair with which he delves into the depths of perversions that are both titillating and revolting.
In this story, the influence of Poe is unabashedly on display, blending elements of The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher into a tale of deeper darkness and depravity than Edgar Allan Poe would have dared document. Twins, a brother and sister, secluded and kept in isolation, become victims of the hallucinatory madness and obsession growing increasingly profound within the young man. The incestuous relationships and compulsions, often writ as subtext by traditional Gothic writers, come to the forefront with The Professor’s ministrations…and the story is all the better for that brazen lack of subtlety. As events unfold before us, we stare with rapt attention as a thing of beauty is systematically destroyed by the very admirer of that exquisite object of the narrator’s obsession.

This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your device of choice. The link is below:

https://godless.com/products/distinctly-i-remember-by-the-professor

Thin Sleep (and Black Thread: A Dark Poem) by Todd Love

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The lake and surrounding campground are empty as Autumn’s chased all but the locals away. It’s the perfect time for a fishing trip, and Rick, Gary, and Stephen fully intend to capitalize on that isolation as they catch up with one another after years of being caught up in their own lives.
Plagued by nightmares and thin sleep their first night in the tents, the men can hardly wait to get out on the boat on their first day of the camping trip. What they find in the cold water is more than just fish, but that shock is nothing compared to what awaits on the shore.
Will law enforcement discover any evidence of what happened to the missing men? Will we see some hint of light or peace at the end of this tale, or will the reader learn that nothing is quite what it seems in this distant campground?
The reader feels the chill in the air and the terror experienced by the campers as their weekend getaway transforms into a living nightmare. Love breathes inauspicious life into this story just as he does everything else I’ve had the pleasure of reading.
Todd Love always gives us more than we expect with his stories. This story also includes the beautifully sinister poem, Black Thread, with its shifting perspective and unexpected revelation. Love is out to prove to readers everywhere that he knows what he’s doing, and he does it well.

Thin Sleep is a Godless exclusive released for the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Thin Sleep : Godless Edition by Todd Love

The Christmas Movie by Ben Arzate

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Ben Arzate’s The Christmas Movie is an excellent example of the author letting the atmosphere do the heavy lifting. There’s a healthy dose of surreal, semi-supernatural horror involved in the story, but it’s the unsettling feeling of something not being right that carries the message home.
The discovery of a potentially unknown television Christmas movie from decades past quickly transforms for the protagonist from a sense that he’d found lost treasure to the ominous feeling that he’s obtained a cursed object. What initially seems like a particularly low-budget, low-quality Christmas movie broadcast by a Christian television network in the 1980s begins to produce a sense of dread as the movie appears to change with each new viewing.
As the protagonist obsessively immerses himself within repeated viewings of the movie, an impression of familiarity becomes apprehension.
As he prepares to return home to his family for the holidays, we’re left with the same sense of trepidation–bordering on panic–the protagonist experiences.

This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile devices. The link is below:

The Christmas Movie by Ben Arzate

Bod by Ash Ericmore

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Peter Smalls might just be the dumbest of the Smalls siblings; he’s certainly the least competent of the brothers we’ve met thus far. I’m not sure that makes him any less dangerous than the others. He might be more dangerous for being how he is.
We’re introduced to Peter just before Peter introduces Theo to his rodent buddy, Petey. Theo had somehow got on the wrong side of a member of the Smalls’ extended family, a cousin who goes by Valentine. Bod and his little buddy, Petey, are there to make things good. This is a win-win scenario for Petey because the little fella hasn’t eaten in a while.
Bod’s been hired by the Eastern Europeans to take care of some competition, but he’s going to be in for a couple of surprises when it comes time to take care of business. That is if he can think clearly enough to get to the correct address.
While Bod wasn’t quite as entertaining as Bliss and Cockwinder for me, it’s still a Smalls Family story, which makes it an absolute thrill ride of over-the-top violence and depravity. You can’t go wrong with any of these stories. Ash Ericmore continues to exhibit the same cinematic storytelling that made readers all over the world fall in love with this dysfunctional family, cementing himself as the literary amalgam of Guy Ritchie and Eli Roth, with just a touch of Tarantino for flavor.

Bod was Ash Ericmore’s release during the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can check it out for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Bod (The Smalls Family VI) by Ash Ericmore

Effucuss by Tim Eagle

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In the third installment of the Vasectomus Trilogy, Tim Eagle brings us back around to Charles Effucuss, the former courier who supplied Sabre with the fluids he required for his parasitic children.
While “Chuckles” was a bit player in the original story, Effucuss fleshes him out in detail. From the moment he begins buying drugs from Sabre, the small-town dynamic of Stevats begins to feel like a force of destiny. Coincidences and happenstance proliferate his everyday life, propelling the young man on a collision course that will take him from isolation and sexism, through the shattered remains of Sue and Sabre’s doomed marriage, to a peculiar sort of fatherhood.
The bizarro and body horror elements from Vasectomus are back in full force in this conclusion to the trilogy. As Eagle takes the components he introduced and amplifies them for this final tale, we’re left wondering how and why all of these events came to pass. But perhaps it’s best not to question these things.

Effucuss was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can find this story for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Effucuss by Tim Eagle

Walking Free by Tim Eagle

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Tim Eagle’s Walking Free reintroduces us to Sue, sometime after the events of Vasectomus, as she’s about to participate in a peculiar ceremony, presumably something isolated to the town of Stevats. We find her wearing a mask as she takes her turn to publicly share her stories of Sabre. Sue joins in a ritual with other residents who gather together near a bonfire to share these often unflattering and purgative tales that wouldn’t be appropriate at a funeral.
Sue’s life before Sabre appears to be one of success and upward mobility, with a bright future ahead of her until she decides that she’s missing only one thing, a family. Unfortunately for Sue, Sabre wasn’t the best choice with that future in mind.
We discover that she knew of Sabre’s machinations and that she was pulling strings to get what she wanted long before the events of Vasectomus took place.
And though she’s a widow now, is it possible she might just have the family she was searching for, despite Sabre’s protestations?
This middle story of the Vasectomus trilogy wasn’t quite as peculiar and captivating as the first installment, but the ending certainly provides a snapshot containing a healthy dose of bizarre and unsettling family.

You can pick up Walking Free and the other two volumes of the Vasectomus Trilogy by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your mobile device. The link is below:

Walking Free by Tim Eagle