Tag: horror

  • The Wormwood Mason

    AI-generated image with refinements by Michael Raven using Gemini agent

    Erza trudged up the muddy two-wheel track leading to the Vane cabin, making sure to cover his bound notebook under his slicker to keep it dry. The rough path was greasy with the steady drizzle of rain that had arrived at Wormwood the same day as he had. He had despaired of driving the last quarter-mile to the cabin immediately upon seeing the conditions from the two-lane, shoulder-less county road that passed by the homestead. When choosing his rental car, he had emphasized economy over practicality. He regretted, not the first time on this expedition, that he had not rented something with four-wheel drive for a trek into the heart of Appalachia.

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  • subject 19 — a short tale

    Below is my short fiction response to prompts proposed by Jolene on her post at Poetry & More. Check out the link to see the criteria she gave her readers either before or after reading to support another online author. Follow her, if you want to be really cool.

    I didn’t do a ton of research before writing this (and it is very much improvisational), so read it as a pulp tale, one not intended to leverage realism to any extent.

    It’s story time!

    subject 19

    Subject 19…?

    His head throbbed in time the hum of the machinery all around as Elias stirred.

    Subject 19…?

    With eyes still closed against the brightness of the room beyond his eyelids, he groaned.

    Subject 19? Can you hear me, now?

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  • reads | Ghost Story, Peter Straub

    This book is a reread, but might as well have been a virgin read for the length of time since I last read it and the various growth potential of the reader since that time.

    When I was younger, we often spent a lot of time up at my aunt’s lakewoods cabin in Northern Minnesota. So did plenty of other aunts and uncles, their friends and otherwise. Someone along the way, someone left a copy of Ghost Story behind, which was put onto a rickety suspended shelf for such books left behind, kind of our family “little library”: take a book/leave a book mentality. I was a budding Stephen King fan at the time (up until I got into King, I read plenty of other juvenile-focused horror, and King was one of my first forays into adult horror, along with Lovecraft). This book was on that shelf, next to Flowers in the Attic (VC Andrews, which had been read as well).

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  • Bringing in the Creeps

    Bringing in the Creeps by Ray Van Horn Jr

    Ray and I are of a similar age — darn near exactly, if I’m being honest, but I like to hold my ever-so-slight seniority over his head like a big brother might. We grew up doing much of the same things. His framework was from the lens of the 80s dirtballs and metalheads, mine from the 80s freaks and goths. Even back in the 80s, these subcultures bonded quite readily and often found common ground, largely because we were all “outside of society” as Patty Smith sang [I won’t risk offending anyone by naming the song, you know or you can look it up]. We were all rejects.

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