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Attention Clive Barker fans: St. Martin’s Press have announced a release date for the novel that will end the Hellraiser mythology; The Scarlet Gospels is due May of 2015! This is exciting news considering the original novella that started it all, The Hellbound Heart, was first published in 1986—nearly thirty years ago! There are so […]
The Kickstarter for Panel of Experts member Cecilia Tan is coming to a close in only ten hours. Gothic.net has the night owls, so this probably schedules out just right. Daron’s Guitar Chronicles is a trilogy about coming of age in the 1980’s while being different. The Daron’s Guitar Chronicles Omnibus Book has already been […]
With The Raven movie, starring John Cusack, opening this weekend, we thought today might be an appropriate day to post Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven. This is from a Project Gutenberg archive of an illustrated 1883 edition. Gustave Doré was the illustrator. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, […]
Stephen King stories often take place in Western Maine, albeit in fictional towns like Salem’s Lot and Castle Rock. This past week, the Maine Gambling Control Board approved the first Maine casino and it is going to be in this area. Before last week, it actually wasn’t legal to even sell poker chips in Maine. […]
Shawn Garret at Pseudopod brings you the auditory pleasure of Maria Alexander reading the creepy holiday story “Coming Home”. Pseudopod, the sound of horror, has been publishing horror podcasts since 2006. Check them out. bonus Christmas flash – Coming HomeDecember 23rd, 2011 2:02 amBy Maria AlexanderThe text of this story is available at Gothic.net. You […]
Read editor Tim Deal’s critically-acclaimed Beneath The Surface: 13 Shocking Tales of Terror, in the embed below, for free. Pretty cool. NOMINATED FOR A BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY 2008! 13+ of the eeriest and most terrifying works of short fiction. THRILLING TALES OF HORROR, MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE! Dark literary fiction available at leading […]
Lucy flew along the 5, raw, humpbacked silhouette of the San Gabriel Mountains already in the Nova’s rearview and ahead flat endless nothing as dark and hopeless as she felt. She pushed the protesting automobile up to 120, hot dusty wind pulling bleachy-green strands of hair loose from her sloppy ponytail and whipping them across her face. Her lower lip was chapped and she chewed at it till it bled, scraping her teeth across the ragged edges over and over. The cute sparkle blue lipstick was long gone.
My mouth is sour with whiskey and the loaded shotgun lays heavily across my lap in my sofa chair. This is my Christmas Eve ritual.
I hate Christmas. The holidays. The time for families to gather to share love and good cheer. Bullshit. I try hard every year to forget there is a Christmas precisely because it reminds me of my family, but this fucking world won’t let me. They’ve romanticized a nightmare.
We kicked in the door of the crypt with an aluminum battering ram and did the sweep-and-spread you usually do when trying to cover unknown space. No bloodthirsty monsters attacked. Our own blood was up from the first bag of the day; maybe I should tell you about that first.
They hurtle south on 15, the desert sands raining upon them like a plague of locusts. They blast the radio through Cedar City and St. George, Fado singing harmony on “Blue Suede Shoes” at the top of his lungs. Outside of Mesquite, they pause for ref reshment, Senor Fado leaning back in the seat and chuckling while Andre does his job, for which he will be paid in artistic and spiritual coin. Afterwards, Fado puts the Caddy in gear and floors it, sending a bewildered Andre sprawling in the seat, cursi ng in three languages as he wipes his chin. Andre calls the Senor a foul name. Senor Fado responds in kind, laughing, and Andre pouts fetchingly. Afterwards they stop for blue-raspberry slushes at Mesquite’s only Meat Market and Convenience Store.
