Tag: Guest Post

Halloween Extravaganza: Daniel Parsons: How to Write Horror for Children

megHan

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” That quote by Stephen King couldn’t be truer. For all of its tension and bloodlust, horror is just entertainment – fantasy with more blood, as I like to call it. And the similarities between the two genres don’t stop there.

Consider these elements: monsters; death; fear; supernatural happenings; a struggle between good and evil; characters cast into unfamiliar environments. All of these components could be used to describe Game of Thrones just as much as The Walking Dead. So what is it that separates them?

Isolation.

A prominent factor that contributes to this theme is that horror lacks some of fantasy’s main character types. Now, this isn’t true in every case but there’s often no mentor or sidekick present in horror stories. There is no cavalry rushing to help the hero. The protagonist is on their own, frequently experiencing the epitome of humanity’s greatest fears: feeling alone; feeling trapped; feeling helpless.

So, Can Horror Be Written for Children?

Admittedly, those are pretty heavy themes to tackle, even for adults. So can it be done for children? In a word, yes. I’m proof of that, having written two zombie books for teens and four dark fantasy books with horror elements for middle grade readers.

The key, I think, is first to write a good horror book – for all ages – and then to prune back some of the more explicit adult elements. In my case, that’s all but the mildest of bad language and sexual references. While those two elements are staples in adult horror, they simply don’t work in children’s literature. You can get away with it for teens, but even then I would approach with caution.

“And what about gore?” I hear you say. “Can we include blood and guts?”

“Oh, gore is fine,” I reply, sipping a red liquid – probably wine – from a human skull. “More than fine, actually. It’s encouraged.”

Honestly, the gore level needed in your story depends on the kind of horror you want to write. For ghost stories, the fear is far more psychological. The moment the monster is revealed, you diffuse the situation. As Alfred Hitchcock once said: “There is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it.”

I, on the other hand, write about zombies, my primary readership sitting in the 12-18 bracket. And if there’s one thing you learn while writing zombie books for young readers, it’s that they want gore. Even those on the younger end. Creative death scenes are all part of the fun.

Just look at Halloween and you’ll understand. Fake blood is everywhere. Kids walk the streets, slathered in synthetic guts, chewing gummy eyeballs. They play games where characters lose limbs. They stay up late watching horror specials on TV. Even to kids as young as eight, a monster biting off a man’s head is greeted with the same enthusiasm and awe as seeing a dragon torch a whole army as it flies overhead.

They love bodies thrown into wood chippers, heads exploding and survivors defending themselves with the severed arms of the fallen undead. One of my stories, The Dead Woods, contained all three of these elements and it was voted on of Wattpad’s “Top Zombie Stories” back in 2016 – on a site with more than 40 million readers, the majority of whom are under 18.

How to Adapt Horror for Younger Readers

Darren Shan, arguably the king of children’s horror in the UK, rose to fame using the same logic in his uber-successful Demonata books. In an early scene in book one, the hero Grubbs Grady finds his parents ripped apart by demons, his father hanging upside down, decapitated. Twelve-year-old me, along with thousands of other readers, devoured that scene. It wasn’t scary, it was cool.

Admittedly, Shan has revealed in an interview with The Guardian, that his editor took an exception to seeing the mother decapitated, so it had to be changed to the hero’s father. By his admission, mothers are protected in children’s horror. They can be killed, but it can’t be described explicitly, because of children’s attachment to their mothers. If it is described, it must be overshadowed by a more barbaric act elsewhere to cushion the blow – in this case, the dad.

While I’m not sure I agree with that idea (and neither would plenty of dads, understandably), his point still stands: horror, being an adventure, should never stray too close to the dangers of reality. It’s meant to be enjoyable – to fill the reader with the sort of tension that ends in an almighty jump, followed by a self-conscious laugh, not the sort of tension that forces them to face the hard truths of the real world.

R. L. Stine, who has sold over 350 million books in his Goosebumps series, words it well: “The real world is much scarier than [my] books. So, I don’t do divorce, even. I don’t do drugs. I don’t do child abuse. I don’t do all the really serious things that would interfere with the entertainment.”

One good way to create this entertainment-based brand of horror, I’ve found, is to write in first person. To focus the lens and omit details that could release the tension. That way, the main character doesn’t expose too much and ruin the tension because they are living in the moment, unprotected, without a narrator to shed a light on the shadows.

If the hero doesn’t see the monster until it’s already too late, neither does the reader, which allows the tension to keep building. It postpones the inevitable bang Hitchcock mentions. And with the reader seeing your world through the hero’s eyes, they experience that true human terror as if they were the hero.

Believe it or not, kids can deal with that sort of tension. Better yet, they thrive on it! They’re tougher than you think.

Daniel Parsons is a fantasy and horror author from South Wales, UK. So far, he’s published seven books, including installments in The Twisted Christmas Trilogy, The Necroville Series, The Canvas Chronicles, and The Creative Business Series for authors. He has been an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada and Australia. Plus, he was fortunate enough to see his debut novel become the fastest downloaded children’s book in America on Christmas Day 2017, four years after publication.

His comedy zombie story, The Dead Woods, has received extensive acclaim on the story-sharing website Wattpad. There, it garnered over 35,000 reads across 70 countries and was named one of the site’s Top Zombie Stories as part of a campaign to promote Hollywood’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie.

To contact Daniel, sign up to his bi-monthly newsletter at his website, check out his books online, or join his 80,000 Twitter followers. He loves hearing from readers.

The Twisted Christmas Trilogy 1: The Winter Freak Show

12-year-old Toby escapes the cruelty of the workhouse and dreams of a life of freedom in Victorian London. He joins the Winter Freak Show, a band of travelling acrobats and performers, who put on a spellbinding show each year before Christmas. But all is not well in the City of London. A shadowy force is kidnapping children, and only Toby knows the terrible truth. In a race against time, Toby must catch the kidnapper. If he fails, Christmas will never be the same again.

The Twisted Christmas Trilogy 2: Face of a Traitor

ONE BOY. TWO WORLDS. AN ANCIENT EVIL THAT WANTS THEM BOTH.

It’s been a year since thirteen-year-old Toby Thornton found his long-lost family. But already cracks are appearing in his dream life. Forbidden from seeing his magical friends at The Winter Freak Show, he begins to realise how much he misses adventure. So when he gets word that the elves are in danger, that’s all the excuse he needs to run away from home.

It isn’t long before he discovers that things are worse than he imagined. Nicko has been kidnapped. And without the ringmaster’s guidance, his elves have descended into chaos. A band of shapeshifting enemies lurk among their ranks. Monsters are on the loose. And the secretive mastermind behind it all is trying to resurrect the most frightening evil the elves have ever faced. Only Toby stands in their way.

If he fails, forget Christmas. This time, the human race will fall.

The Necroville Series 0: The Dead Woods

THE PAID ACTORS AT THE NECROVILLE SURVIVAL EXPERIENCE ARE VERY GOOD AT PRETENDING TO BE ZOMBIES. TOO GOOD…

When Will and his friends decide to spend one last night together after graduating university, none of them realise the danger that lurks in plain sight. At first they’re having fun, caught up in the thrill of running through the forest, firing Nerf guns at under-paid zombies-actors. Then that all changes when darkness falls.

It quickly becomes apparent that the actors are very good at what they do. Too good. Armed with only an arsenal of Nerf guns, the group quickly figure out that they’ll need more than just foam bullets and sandwiches to get them through the night.

The Dead Woods is the critically acclaimed comedy zombie story that founded The Necroville Series. If you like Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead then you’ll love Daniel Parsons’s hilarious horror.

The Necroville Series 1: Last Crawl

WHEN ALCOHOL MAKES YOU INVISIBLE TO ZOMBIES, A BAR CRAWL COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE.

Milo’s fear of everything has held him back for as long as he can remember. He knows university will drag him out of his comfort zone but he has no idea just how uncomfortable he is about to become. When zombies strike during his first night out on campus, he quickly discovers that making friends is a matter of life and death.

A chance encounter reveals that zombies don’t attack extremely drunk people. Can Milo and his new flatmates band together to survive the most dangerous bar crawl the world has ever seen?

Last Crawl is the first novel in this comedy horror series, inspired by the author’s critically acclaimed short story The Dead Woods. If you like Shaun of the Dead, Warm Bodies, or Zombieland, then you’ll love Daniel Parsons’ new zombie comedy.

Halloween Extravaganza: Martin Berman-Gorvine: STORY: Mischief Night

megHan

I’d like to welcome back Martin Berman-Gorvine, with another short story written specifically for the Halloween Extravaganza. I always look forward to his submissions, and I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.

Mischief Night
A Tale of the Age of Moloch

By the time Lisa Henry broke out of the Castle, it was already Mischief Night. That meant she had just three days to live before she would be taken out when Black Mass ended at midnight, tied spread-eagled to the hood of Jack Kolver’s 1963 Ford Thunderbird, and become the Virgin Sacrifice Unto Moloch with a flick of the Pastor’s knife.

Since she was understandably unhappy at this prospect, she had done everything she could think of to avoid becoming Prom Queen of the Class of 1982. As a Nice Girl who was also stunningly gorgeous, with large almond-shape dark eyes and a lustrous mane of black hair, she had her work cut out for her to avoid her unspeakable fate when she started school last fall, her senior year at Chatham’s Forge High School. But she gamely did her best. She started by getting roaring drunk on moonshine for Homecoming and ralphing all over Mr. Goff’s spit-polished tasseled loafers. Since the shoes were the guidance counselor’s pride and joy, and he had the power to bust her Student Caste from Nice Girl all the way down to Slut, she figured she was set. Instead he wiped off the shoes with a damp paper towel, escorted her to the staff bathroom, and held back her hair as she finished emptying her stomach.

She tried talking back in class, even taking Moloch’s name in vain in Religion class with Mrs. Larssen. The old biddy merely patted her on the head and told her to calm down. Well, there was the more direct route to getting relabeled as a Slut. Her boyfriend, Chad Miller, was even more popular than she, a clean-cut blonde Jock who was the star Grabber for the Cheetahs in their blood-soaked grudge-match Games against the Linwood Lions. In the highly unlikely event that Lisa’s head did not end up separated from her curvy body and propped up like a gruesome hood ornament on the T-Bird the morning after All Souls Day, everyone expected her to marry Chad and have like a dozen kids, which would play hell with her figure. That prospect was only slightly more appealing than the sanguinary option, so she cheated on Chad with gusto and abandon, juicily smooching random guys in the crowded school hallways between class, making out with his best friend Jimmy “Punch-Drunk” Jones in the bleachers as the stands were filling up for a Game, and consummating her loss of innocence one memorable night during a January thaw with Frankie “Four-Eyes” Feldstein. Since Four-Eyes was the Platonic ideal of a Nerd and Lisa the foremost Nice Girl of the Class of ‘82, fucking him in full view of the T-Bird altar was a double sacrilege, a heaping of Caste Miscegenation on top of Unauthorized Sex. Poor Frankie took the full brunt of the punishment, though he went to his death on Chief Punisher Ariadne Mitchell’s dreaded Impaler shrieking that it had been worth it, and Lisa got off scot-free.

Chad laughed off Lisa’s betrayal. After all, he had been boinking Chelsea Everard, the Chief Cheetahs Cheerleader and another so-called Nice Girl, since sophomore year. But Lisa still held out high hopes she would get pregnant. Then Goff would have no choice but to bust her down to Slut. Even though that meant she’d probably end up a Holy Ho in the Consecrated Cathouse after graduation, it would still beat becoming Moloch’s All Souls Day treat.

No dice. There was blood in her panties, regular as pit-and-pendulum clockwork, and Lisa was inconsolable. Her mother tried to comfort her. “You don’t understand, Mom!” she wailed. “I’m gonna be the next Virgin Sacrifice!”

Mom’s cheek twitched. “You’re thinking a bit much of yourself, aren’t you, young lady? The way I hear it, Chelsea’s a shoo-in!”

“That dog, with her simpering smile and her strawberry-blonde curls? Puh-lease, Mom! It’s been blondes three years in a row, and everyone knows that Moloch likes a little variety!” She vowed to herself she’d get knocked up no matter what it took, but Chad just chuckled and pushed her away when she tried to corner him, and to all the other guys she was radioactive after they had been forced to watch Frankie’s agonizing death.

In the end, Lisa was right to worry that she would be Chosen. She was smack in the middle of Moloch’s spotlight when the high school gym ceiling rolled back to reveal the shadowy, towering form of the bloodthirsty god on Prom Night. She screamed and tried to run, but her classmates and teachers formed a solid ring around her, and the god’s enormous claws closed around the waist of her bright pink sequined gown and bore her away, wriggling and straining against the iron grip, to the Castle for her ritual four-month imprisonment.

Lisa the Apostate refused to surrender to her fate, chipping patiently away at the crumbling concrete walls of her cell with her metal food tray. The Castle was a former National Guard armory, built in 1922 when Chatham’s Forge was a part of the United States, and its structural integrity had been compromised forty years later when the Russkies nuked nearby Philadelphia during the War of the Judgment, also known for some inexplicable reason as the Cuber War. Maybe the nuke bombs were shaped like cubes, or something. Lisa had never been one to pay attention in history or any other class; Nice Girls were discouraged from doing so, anyhow. It was just as well—knowing how and why Moloch had really come to power in the shattered post-World War III world would have driven her to despair. As it was, she industriously flushed the dust from her work down the cell’s toilet each day, until the pipes filled with cement and the stench became unbearable. Nevertheless, she persisted, and broke out to the empty neighboring room on Mischief Night, not that she knew the date by the time she freed herself and ran down the stairs in her soiled Prom dress and pumps, a shit-stinking Cinderella.

It can’t be this easy, she thought as she barreled through the front door of the Castle and charged down Boot Hill in the darkness, making a beeline for home. As she ran, the sight of blazing trees in front yards brought home to her how much time had passed while she was imprisoned in the Castle. Mischief Night was an old tradition in Chatham’s Forge. Every year, Army draftees soaked bales of torn-up old copies of Moloch’s Truth, the local newspaper that was sold in town as toilet paper, in a vat of corn oil. Then they fanned out down the deserted streets at dusk, draping them over tree branches in the yards of those the Pastor had designated Enemies of Moloch. (Gasoline would have been preferable as lighter fluid, but since the War the stuff was worth its weight in molten gold.) When the air-raid siren atop the Town Hall went off, the trainee soldiers set the trees alight for the greater glory of Moloch, and his Enemies counted themselves lucky if the flames didn’t spread to their homes.

None of this was Lisa’s concern at the moment. Her parents were strictly orthodox, her little brother Ralph even more so; thus, there was zero chance of their big old oak tree being torched. Cutting across strangers’ backyards, ignoring the barking of the German shepherds their rich neighbors kept as guard dogs, she arrived gasping for breath at her own back door and began pounding on it, yelling for her family to let her in.

A few seconds later Ralph yanked the door open. In the four months Lisa had been gone he had grown at least an inch and his hair had darkened. “Pee-yew, Sis, you stink,” he said, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger.

Mom’s fretful voice came from behind him. “Who’s making all that racket and breaking curfew? And didn’t I tell you to clean out the drain field for the septic tank?”

“I did, Mom! The smell is Lisa!”

“What are you talking about?” Mom demanded, shoving him aside. “Lisa is—oh, dear Moloch, it is you! What are you doing here?”

Having planned for this moment, Lisa burst into carefully rehearsed tears. “Oh, M-Mommy! It’s so awful! The Pastor himself came to my cell and told me I’m unworthy to be the Virgin Sacrifice! I’ve never been so humiliated in my life!”

Mom’s big dark eyes bulged. “But why? What did you do, young lady?”

“Let me in and I’ll tell you all about it.” Mom shut the door behind her, but immediately started gagging at the stench. “G-go take a bath first! I’ll have to call your father at work to come deal with this! You are going to be GROUNDED for a very long time for messing up Moloch’s Sacrifice, missy!” Lisa ran upstairs, her heart soaring, as Mom called Dad at his night watchman’s job at the Punishment Farm. It’s going to be all right, she thought, as she stepped out of her Prom dress and into the freezing, beautiful spray of their bucket-shower. Instead of hating the sandpaper-like soap that was all they could afford, she luxuriated in it and its faintly sour smell. I actually escaped! All I have to do is lie low for the next three days, the Pastor will grab Chelsea instead, and I’ll be home free!

As she was drying herself off she heard the front door slam, followed by her father’s voice. Daddy sounded angry, but how could that be? She’d always been his favorite. Disgrace to Moloch or no, wasn’t he overjoyed that his only Lee-Lee had returned to him alive?

He was not. She only caught snatches of the snarled conversation he had with Mom, but they were more than enough. “Naïve idiot!” he said, followed by a slap, a loud thump and Mom crying. He hadn’t hit her that hard since she was a freshman! Then his footsteps thundered up the stairs, hard enough to make the floorboards vibrate. Lisa dove for the door, turning the lock in the nick of time. “Open up! Open up, you MONOTHEIST!” Dad roared, rattling the doorknob as he followed up with a string of swear words that were almost as bad. He was throwing all his weight against the door as Lisa slammed the window open and jumped out, still clutching the towel. She wrapped it around herself and ran blindly, her tears streaking out behind her like rain off the windshield of a speeding car, a sight unseen in her world since before she was born. Her adrenaline was running so high she didn’t even notice she’d twisted her left ankle until the pain began to slow her down. As she limped up an unfamiliar street by the light of a burning TP’d tree, she also noticed she’d lost her towel and began to sob. There was no way out. Dad was going to raise the alarm and in minutes, everyone in town would be out hunting for the Lady Godiva of Chatham’s Forge. They’d tie her to a stake and heap damp pine branches beneath her feet, to smolder and roast her alive, slowly. Ariadne Mitchell would design a brand-new torture rack just for her. Moloch Himself would tear her intestines out while she watched…

In the normal course of a person’s life, ruminating over all the terrible things that might happen is worse than useless, it is maladaptive, a cause of anxiety and overall misery. At this moment of peril for Lisa, however, this mental tendency did the job it had evolved to do and spurred her to action. She didn’t want to die, and if she was doomed anyway she wasn’t going to go out on Moloch’s terms. So she limped down the street as fast as she could, heading by instinct toward the darkness at the edge of town.

Everybody knew there was nothing outside town but radioactive woods filled with cannibal Mutants. To protect his people against them, mighty Moloch had erected a big, beautiful Wall that was invisible to the naked eye but would slice you in two if you tried to walk through it unauthorized. Only Army raiding parties were allowed out, to enslave select Muties and drag them back to the Forge. And yet, it was whispered that if you kept your eye on Brandywine Creek, which cut through the center of town, you’d notice that it flowed through the Wall as if the barrier wasn’t there. So if you could hold your breath and duck under the water at just the right spot, and push yourself forward for just the right amount of time, escape was possible. Only someone truly desperate would attempt it, however, because the creek was shallow and narrow at the point upstream where it crossed the Wall, and filled with raw sewage at the downstream end.

Lisa, of course, was truly desperate. So she followed her nose through the chilly night air, frantic to find the stink she’d just washed off. Somewhere she heard the barking of dogs as a posse was assembled to hunt her down, and she jumped as the air-raid siren blasted. There were shouts in the night. She stumbled on, dry-sobbing as she scaled fences, tripped over tree roots and stubbed her toes on unseen rocks. At last, she glimpsed firelight from a burning tree reflected off flowing water somewhere down below, and took off down the slope so fast she almost fell, twice. “Stop right there, infidel!” a man’s voice yelled. There was a loud crack and a bullet whistled past her ear. Lisa jumped off the bank, drawing a deep breath as she plunged toward the sewer outlet, though the smell was so foul she began to choke before she even hit the surface. Never mind. Just… have to… follow the current… but how far, how far? For a Forger, Lisa was a pretty decent swimmer, and she’d taken part in a breath-holding contest once where some Nerd passed out and turned blue. But she’d never tried to swim underwater before, and already her lungs were aching. Just… a little… further… Just… a little more… and I’ll be free, in the woods. She poked her head above the surface a fraction of a second too soon.

Now, if this was a made-up story, you’d expect to hear how Moloch’s magic Wall sliced the pretty girl’s head neatly off her shoulders, spilling her guts into the muck and proving that You Can’t Escape Fate. After all, Lisa was lovely, and terrible things are always happening to comely young women in Gothic tales. Moreover, in seducing poor Frankie Feldstein in hopes that she would be rejected as Virgin Sacrifice and Chelsea Everard would take her place, she was treating other human beings as a Means to an End, in violation of the Golden Rule, Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” philosophy, and numerous other religious and ethical precepts. Thus, the mythical force of justice should have gotten her. However, this occurred in real life, and she surfaced in the free air of the forest with nothing worse than a skinned elbow, although she did nearly die a few days later from the raging infection spawned by introducing raw sewage into an open wound. But a tribe of Freemen, as they preferred to call themselves, had already found her and were nursing her through her delirium, while curly-headed Chelsea died in agony and terror at the hands of Moloch and His Pastor, thus becoming the Virgin Sacrifice of the Class of 1982. For the rest of her life, Lisa would be haunted by nightmares of Frankie and Chelsea.

And that, kids, is the whole story of how come my left elbow looks like I have an enormous burn scar, and also why I scream a lot in my sleep. I hope you’re satisfied.

If you found this story terrifying, nauseating and utterly tasteless, you will certainly not enjoy Martin Berman-Gorvine’s four-book alternate history horror series, Days of Ascension, to which it is a prequel.

Martin Berman-Gorvine is the perpetrator of the four-book Days of Ascension horror novel series, of which Judgment Day is mercifully the last. All Souls Day (2016), Day of Vengeance (2017), and Day of Atonement (2018) were also published by Silver Leaf Books, in an inexplicable lapse of literary judgment and good taste.

Martin is also the author of seven science fiction novels, including the Sidewise Award-winning The Severed Wing (as Martin Gidron) (Livingston Press, 2002); 36 (Livingston Press, 2012); Seven Against Mars (Wildside Press, 2013); Save the Dragons! (Wildside Press, 2013), which was a finalist for the Prometheus Award; Ziona: A Novel of Alternate History (as Marty Armon), an expansion of the short story “Palestina,” published in Interzone magazine, May/June 2006 (Amazon/CreateSpace, 2014); Heroes of Earth (Wildside Press, 2015); and Monsters of Venus (Wildside Press, 2017).

Martin lives in Maryland with his wife and the younger two of his three sons, four cats, and two Muppet-like dogs.

Days of Ascension 1: All Soul’s Day

If a demon and its servants ruled your ordinary town, demanding an annual virgin sacrifice, would you have the courage to stop them? And at what price? This question confronts Amos Ross, Suzie Mitchell, and Vickie Riordan, high school seniors in the new horror novel, All Souls Day. 

In an alternate reality of the 1980’s, twenty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis triggered World War III and left the United States a devastated wasteland, the ancient, demonic god Moloch, whose worship was forbidden by the Old Testament, exercises absolute control over the Philadelphia suburb of Chatham’s Forge. The town is an oasis of prosperity that the nuclear war hardly touched, but its comfort comes at a fearful cost: at the high school prom every year, the prettiest and most popular senior girl is chosen by Moloch and his servant, the evil Pastor Justin Bello, to be spirited away to a former National Guard armory known as the Castle, where she is imprisoned alone for five months only to be beheaded and eaten alive by the demon on All Souls Day, the second of November, the anniversary of the war. And this year, 1985, it’s Suzie’s turn…

Days of Ascension 2: Day of Vengeance

What if you escaped being sacrificed to the evil god Moloch and banished him from your town at a terrible price in blood and destruction… only to become prey to gods more powerful and ruthless still?

Teenage friends Suzie Mitchell, Amos Ross, and Vickie Riordan are plunged into this terrifying dilemma in the ruins of their hometown, Chatham’s Forge, in a world devastated by nuclear war. Stumbling through the wreckage, they must confront the physically living but soul-dead remains of their friends and family, the vengeful victims of the old order in the Forge, the ascent of the powerful and seductive goddess Asherah, and worst of all… the deeds they themselves are tempted to commit in their rage and grief.

Days of Ascension 3: Day of Atonement

When human rebels overthrow a god of human sacrifice, only to bring about the rise of a goddess even more cruel and perverse, is there any chance human dignity and freedom can survive?

High school sweethearts Amos and Suzie have been surviving in the woods with their two little children and a small band of the like-minded for seven years, ever since they destroyed the bloodthirsty god Moloch. Their friend Vickie is with them, but she lives under a curse because she fell under the spell of the goddess Asherah, murdered dozens of people in her name, and then turned against her. Can Vickie overcome her overwhelming guilt and the curse that exiles her from human society—and can she and her friends bring Asherah down? And if they do, what new bloodthirsty gods lie in waiting? Find out, in Day of Atonement! 

Days of Ascension 4: Judgment Day

Twenty-five years ago, high school friends and lovers Amos, Suzie and Vickie destroyed Moloch, the evil god who reigned over their hometown of Chatham’s Forge, taking the Prom Queen in sacrifice each year. Together they have set up their own alternative society far from the Forge, which is now ruled over by an even more powerful and evil god, Ba’al. God Himself is hiding from this new threat in an abandoned 7-Eleven in Cape May, New Jersey. Can our heroes survive?

Release Day: To Be Announced

Halloween Extravaganza: Dev Jarrett: The Rise and Fall of the King of Halloween

megHan

Let’s welcome Dev Jarrett today, who has a story to tell us about his Halloween memories.

My eighth Halloween began on Christmas Day when I was seven years old. Looking back, I don’t even know if Halloween was that big of a deal to me until that age. I mean, make-believe is the realm of children, and pretending to be someone else is just another day in the life of a child. Trying on different masks and different identities is a normal part of finding out who we are. Some of us realize that we enjoy trying on ALL the masks, ALL the time, I suppose, and turn into writers—or maybe schizophrenics.

When I woke up on Christmas morning in 1978—yeah, I’m that old, so what—I found the most amazing gift ever. A “King of the Gorillas Movie Makeup Kit” was nestled under the tree next to the handheld Electronic Football and Simon. I loved all three of these gifts, and I think I played both of the electronic games until I wore out the buttons, but the biggest deal was the movie makeup kit. Yeah, the age recommendation was ten and up, but thankfully Dad (as he usually did) ignored that shit.

I remembered the Planet of the Apes movies and I thought of how cool it had looked in those movies that the actors spoke and their makeup moved with them. This was like that. Realism! Instead of simple face paint, this amazing kit had individual molds of facial features. You had to mix the gelatin stuff together, then pour it into the molds and wait for it to set. When they were cured, you had rubbery appliances to attach to your face with the special glue. After that, paint the appliances and the exposed parts of your skin and put the cowl thing on—clearly the lamest part of the kit. I mean, it doesn’t even really look like hair.

It had enough of the mix for two applications, so I knew I couldn’t wait. I asked Dad to make me up – and I guess in that sense, it was a big kid’s toy, and Dad was the big kid. He made the pieces and trimmed them to fit me, and painstakingly painted me up. And it was so friggin’ cool! Somewhere in my parents’ house is a dusty photo album containing a picture of me in a Star Wars t-shirt and gorilla movie makeup. I knew, absolutely, that this was what I wanted to be for Halloween next year.

I would be the King of Halloween. The KING. After so many years of wearing boxed costumes with dead plastic mouthslits, I was going to look REAL. Next fall, I’d be the scariest monster roaming the streets of my neighborhood. We packed everything away carefully and I waited for the calendar to roll around to October of 1979. While the other kids would have plain plastic masks with eyeholes and stupid costumes, their “Trick or Treat!” muffled and lifeless, I’d be able to show a moving gorilla mouth and say something super pithy and cool, like “Trick or Treat, human.” This would be SO badass.

Halloween finally came. I was excited, ready to take my place as King of the jungle and the neighborhood King of Halloween. Dad hooked me up, carefully constructing the disguise that would make me look like something out of a movie. The mixing, the placement, and the painting took so much time, and all I could do was sit still while he created my alter ego. When he finished, he took my sister and me out to walk the neighborhood. Mom stayed home to pass out candy.

Dad walked from house to house with us, but stayed on the street while we went up to the doors. The first few houses marveled at my glorious disguise, oohing and ahhing over the intricacy of my makeup. In all honesty, the rest of the costume was regular streetclothes, but the makeup more than made up for any shortcoming in the wardrobe department. I began to think I was receiving more candy than the other kids because my gorilla makeup was absolutely the best. My pumpkin-shaped bucket of candy was heavy with the good stuff, none of that orange- or black-wrapped peanut butter taffy shit.

Damn right. The King of Halloween. The King, baby.

But I didn’t know what waited around the corner.

Barely out of sight of our house, already riding high on the idea that I had absolutely the best costume anyone was going to see this year, we went to a house with streamers hanging across the entry to the front porch. The porch stretched all the way across the front of the house, and it was festooned with hanging cobwebs and more streamers. They’d swapped out their usual porch lightbulb for a bright orange bulb. It was cool to see someone else in the neighborhood making an effort for the holiday. We went up the walk to the door and rang the bell, and Dad waited at the curb.

The timing was perfect. The front door opened, and I was already expecting new praises for my amazing getup. I was distracted, and didn’t see the maniac. He jumped over the side railing of the front porch and charged toward us, howling like a monster.

When I look back on it now, I think he must’ve been dressed as Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but at the time, it was only a giant (a grownup? dressed for Halloween? WTF?) guy in a bloody shirt and lumpy plastic mask lumbering toward us and screeching. He may have even had a chainsaw, I don’t know.

The self-proclaimed King of Halloween lost his shit. He dropped his bucket of candy, yelled, and ran for his goddamned life. My little sister ran too, but I think my reaction probably scared her more than Leatherface. I sprinted back down the front walk to the street, screaming at the top of my lungs, and launched myself into my Dad’s arms, crying. I ruined his shirt, burying my face in his chest. He was laughing, and in the same situation, I suppose I’d do the same.

He held me for a moment, and protected me, and he told me everything was okay, and soon the effects of the jump scare passed. When I turned to look, tears still streaming down my tiny gorilla face, the Leatherface guy was apologizing while laughing, and had brought my dropped bucket of candy out to the street. Dad assured him everything was cool, that I was okay, and in a few minutes, we continued on our way.

The King of Halloween, the kid with the awesome movie-quality makeup job, had been handily dethroned by a guy in a lumpy plastic mask whose mouth couldn’t even move. Ugh. How embarrassing.

I’ll always remember that Halloween. Halloween is such a fun day that it’s celebrated practically every day in our house, but that one was the one that truly scared me for the first time.

I was super terrified, and you know what?

It was fun.

So now my wife and I have carried on our own Halloween tradition for the past 25 years, and every year our neighbors know us as the “Halloween House.” We dress up, we play our parts, and really get into the spirit. One year, Jennie actually built a working guillotine for a dungeon-themed Halloween! Last year we had a Pet Sematary, and this year’s theme is a Witches’ Sabbath. Let’s see how many kids (and adults) we can scare this time. Come visit!

Happy Halloween.

Dev Jarrett is a writer, a father of five, a husband, and one of those guys the US Army trained too much. He speaks Arabic, he can break ciphers in his sleep, and can still break down and reassemble an M4 rifle and an M9 pistol while blindfolded.

He’s visited many different countries in the past quarter century, and can’t talk about most of the adventures he’s had. On the other hand, it’s public record that he’s received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, so make what you will of that.

He’s represented by Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency, and all he wants is to scare the hell out of you.

Loveless

Till death do us part… sometimes.

When a hapless explorer disturbs the watery grave of Muriel Wallace, a terrifying chain of events is put into motion. Corey Rockland, sheriff of a sleepy Georgia town, must now unravel the mystery behind a corrupt family and a broken heart dating back to the Civil War. Unless he can find a way to stop her, Muriel will unleash her vengeance on anyone she deems loveless.

Dark Crescent

If you could change the future, would you?

Bud Primrose, assistant coach of a Little League team, gets smacked in the head with a line drive and wakes up in the hospital with a kind of second sight.

If you saw a stranger’s death coming, would you try to save her?

He sees others’ deaths hours before they occur. When he uses this strange new ability to save a woman from a brutal murder, he becomes the thwarted next target.

If you had the power, would you use it?

Now he must do everything he can to save himself and the woman he loves from the razor-wielding maniac bent on payback.

If you had to face a killer, could you do it?

Casualties

Fresh from Afghanistan, crippled by both a crumbling marriage and growing paranoia, can a soldier save his family from the ancient evil in his own house? 

Sergeant First Class Chris Williams is back home, and he and his family are move to Fort Huachuca, a small Army post deep in the southeastern corner of Arizona.

From the time they move in, Chris and his wife Molly are struck by the preponderance of ghost stories surrounding their new home. Chris wonders why nightmares still plague him—then, he realizes the reason. He and his family are not alone in their house. An evil older than Fort Huachuca, older than time itself, lives there. Now, enough sacrifices have been made to its blood hunger that it can finally give birth to a powerful, deadly offspring intent on dominating our world.

Chris, Molly, and their two children become pawns of the evil spirit inhabiting their new neighborhood. Already casualties of life, crippled by both a crumbling marriage and growing paranoia, can Chris and Molly save their family from the evil already living under their own roof?

Little Sister

Seven year old Lucinda has a homemade doll that has a special kind of magic. When someone tries to hurt Lucinda and her mother, perhaps he’ll see the doll’s magic too.

For her seventh birthday Lucinda’s grandfather sends her a homemade doll. Her mother Sharon had a little sister once—and now Lucinda has a “little sister” of her own.    

Sharon’s boyfriend Deke is not the man she thought he was—he’s hateful and abusive, like something out of a nightmare. Now he’s on the run from the police and he’s taken Sharon and Lucinda with him.

Mother and daughter must find some way to escape his blood-soaked grasp before he kills them both. They have no way out.

All they have is Lucinda’s homemade doll.

Halloween Extravaganza: A.J. Brown: Halloween

megHan

A.J. Brown joins us today to tell us a little bit about his favorite holiday and the story of a really good friend of his, now gone.

Halloween is my favorite day of the year. It also used to be Chris Dunne’s favorite day. I say used to be because Chris died on Halloween night in 1995. For the record, this is not a lead in to a fictional story of some movie slasher who wears a mask and carries a chainsaw or machete or has Wolverine type claws on his fingertips. Please, understand that now before you read any further.

I don’t want to tell you the story of Chris’s death, though I have to, somewhat, so you understand. I’ve already written a book about his death and the events leading up to it. For those who don’t know, he died of a gunshot wound to the head. I’m going to leave out the rest of the details. If you want those, you can pick up Closing the Wound and read all about it.

What I want to write about here today is the irony of something he did, something I helped him do. Stick with me for a few paragraphs and I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.

Most of you know me as an author of dark stories, most of which are considered horror. Before I began writing, I used to draw. My favorite things to draw were superheroes. I have entire sketch pads dedicated to just superheroes. One Sunday at church I wasn’t feeling the message. I’m not going to lie here, the sermon was boring and the preacher lost me at hello. On the back of the bulletin I drew a picture of a man holding a balloon and floating away—it was what I wanted to do right then: float away. It was nothing special, just a sketched out person holding a balloon, shaded to look like it could have been red or blue or some other dark color.

After church, in the car as I took Chris home, he said to me, “That’s a pretty cool drawing you did in church.”

Part of me was embarrassed that he saw it. The other part was flattered. However, I’ve never been good at taking compliments, so I played it off with, “It’s just a sketch. I do them all the time.”

That’s when Chris asked me, “Can you teach me how to draw like that?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

A couple of weeks later, he came to my house. We sat at a picnic table in the backyard, each of us with paper and pencils in front of us. I showed him the basics of drawing, using shapes, like ovals, squares, rectangles and triangles. He drew those shapes on his paper, just as I had on mine. I showed him how to connect the shapes and add depth and layers to the drawing. He seemed to really enjoy creating something from a piece of paper and a wooden stick with lead in it.

That began a run of a few weeks where he came over on either Saturday or Sunday and we would draw together, me showing him and him learning and getting better.

Abruptly, those lessons stopped when he met Chris Pettite. He was a year older and looked like a weasel—literally, his face had the shape of a weasel’s. He was also a bad boy. He didn’t play by the rules and he was good at manipulation. (For the sake of the rest of this part, I will refer to the boys as CD for Dunne and CP for Pettite, otherwise there is the potential for a lot of confusion.) It was mid-summer when they met and CD’s life changed.

CD left the church we all attended. He started skipping school. He stopped hanging around all of his old friends. His skin took on a different appearance, almost waxy, as if he no longer took showers. The skin beneath his eyes always seemed to have gray or bruised bags beneath them. There was speculation that he was using drugs and doing things he shouldn’t be. During that time period, he turned sixteen, and what can you tell a sixteen-year-old rebellious boy? Nothing. That’s the answer. Not a thing.

On Halloween morning in 1995 I talked to him around eight. It was the last time I talked to him. Around twelve or so hours later, CD would be dead.

Just writing that sentence gave me goosebumps and brought tears to my eyes.

Before I go, I want to tell you about the irony of Chris’s death and drawing superheroes. Chris, as I stated earlier, loved Halloween. He loved horror movies and the darker side of entertainment. The last time he came to my house for a drawing session, he left a few pictures in a brown letter-sized envelope. I didn’t think anything of it and I put it in my portfolio of pictures. Years later, after I wrote the original form of Closing the Wound, I came across that envelope. Not knowing what was in it or who it even came from, I opened it.

My heart stopped. Well, I believe it stopped. If not, it missed a good chance to do so. There were three pictures, one that held a word and two that were actual pictures. The first one I saw made my stomach drop into my thighs. It was a picture of a coffin. Above it was the word FUNERAL. The second was the single word, which was the same one on the coffin picture and on the last one as well. The third image was of this big, muscle bound hero with a spike on the backside of each hand. He had a little, bald head and a huge body.

As I stared at the pictures, the only thoughts I had were I taught my friend how to draw a coffin and a hero who went by the name of Funeral. In writing, we call this foreshadowing. In life, we call it heart wrenching. I’ll never say my friend had a death wish, but you have to admit, that’s kind of what it looked like when I found those pictures.

Chris loved the darker things in life. He loved Halloween. In hindsight, he might have even foreshadowed his own death.

I leave you with this: though my friend is gone and has been for many years, I still think about him on a regular basis, especially on Halloween. So, this year, if you wouldn’t mind, get your favorite candy bar and raise it in the air for my friend, Chris.

I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween. As for me, I will, even as I remember my friend.

Until we meet again, my friends, be kind to one another.

A.J.

A.J. Brown is a southern-born writer who tells emotionally charged, character driven stories that often delve into the dark parts of the human psyche. Though he writes mostly darker stories, he does so without unnecessary gore, coarse language, or sex. More than 200 of his stories have been published in various online and print publications.

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Halloween Extravaganza: Christine Morgan: George

megHan

Today, Christine Morgan joins us to tell us about the most important part of her Halloween… George.

For some, the ritual involves a trip to the pumpkin patch, maybe haunted hayrides, a corn maze. For others, it’s the ceremonial carving and lighting of the jack-o-lantern, or deciding on a costume, or stocking up on trick-or-treat goodies (sometimes early, so you oops have to go buy more before the big night arrives).

I am in favor of all those things, but, for me, THE main thing about Halloween prep involves setting up a George. Halloween just does not feel right without a George. When I was a kid, as far back as I can remember, we always had a George.

George. That first George, the one from my childhood, had a saggy scowly old-man face with warts and a hooked nose, mean little slits for eyes, and scraggly greyish hair. He wore a plaid lumberjack style shirt, overalls, scuffed brown work boots, thick gardening gloves, sometimes a hat. He sat in the blue chair we hauled outside for the occasion, between the front stoop and the garage side door. Maybe he’d have a carved pumpkin on his lap, maybe a bowl of candy.

I loved George. Even after the first year I thought I was big and brave enough to go trick-or-treating without my parents, and did fine until I got back to my very own yard and realized I’d have to go past George to get in the house. I had never been scared of George before. I ended up crying at the bottom of the driveway, until a kind neighbor lady took pity on me and walked me to the door.

Now, I KNEW, even in my young brain, that George was harmless. Hadn’t I helped set him up myself? Wadding newspaper to stuff into his legs and arms? Tugging his mask down over his styrofoam wig-head? Propping him up just right, just so? Posing with him for pictures? I knew George. I loved George. And yet … that year, cowering in the dark with my pillowcase full of candy … that year, for the first time … I finally understood.

Good ol’ George. All the neighborhood kids became familiar with him over the years. They’d call, “Hi, George!” as they approached to knock. The littler ones might hide their faces, have to be coaxed past him. The older and bolder – swaggering tween boys, most often – would dare each other to go up and poke him, or flick his nose.

My dad was always into Halloween. Looking back, it probably explains how he eventually became a Civil War re-enactor, being able to dress up all the time. We’d often do themed costumes; I remember being a chunky little girl Peter Pan one year, with my baby sister as Tinkerbell and Dad as Captain Hook. I remember another year, Dad, who had long hair and a full beard, put on a white caftan and sandals and a crown of plastic thorns to go as Jesus.

Then, one year, Dad didn’t pick a costume. Dad had another plan. That year, when the evening of October 31 rolled around and we still hadn’t made a George, I found out why, because Dad donned George’s outfit, mask and gloves and all. Dad sat in the blue chair between the garage door and stoop. Sat very still, totally motionless. Sat there … waiting.

I lingered eagerly to watch. Soon enough, along came the trick-or-treaters, including some of those older-bolder swagger boys. All “Hi, George” sneering, going right up to him, reaching to flick his nose. Just like they’d done plenty of times before.

Only, this time, ‘George’ lunged forward in his chair, going “Raarrrr!” And oh, my goodness, did those boys hit the high notes? Could you have heard them from blocks away? Did they run, even dropping plastic pumpkin buckets to spill across the yard? Why, yes, yes indeed. There may even have been pants-wetting. It was glorious. Simply glorious. You’d better believe, next year, George was greeted with far more respect.

It never occurred to me back then … in fact, it never occurred to me until just a few years ago, and I’m now 52 … to wonder why his name was George. When the question finally did surface, I asked my parents. No luck. Not even Dad could recall just how George had gotten his name in the first place. It just WAS.

Looking back, I’d like to theorize it was in homage to George Romero. We used to watch a lot of Saturday night black and white creature-features. I had the Hammer horror glow-in-the-dark model kits, and monster movie trading cards. I got most of my reading material from the bookshelf my grandma made my grandfather keep in the garage – seeing Grady Hendrix do his Paperbacks From Hell presentation was a wallop of nostalgia right back to my childhood.

So, yeah, I’d like to think it was for Romero, maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know. What I do know is, once I was grown up, moved away, done with college, and ready to be a responsible adult (well, more or less), I needed a new George of my very own. Had to keep up the family tradition! Especially once I had a kid! It couldn’t be a proper Halloween without a George.

These days, my George is bald and pruney, with a blue-grey kind of drowned/dead complexion going on. He wears blood-spattered surgical scrub pants and a stained white long-johns shirt. One of his gloves grips the handle of a bloody cleaver. Instead of just a chair, he has an entire butcher shop, filling my porch with tables of body parts, choice cuts of meat, jars of organs, and the various violent tools of his trade.

He even has company in the form of the lovely Roxy, who went from being a dead hooker in a box (found her at a haunted house garage sale one summer, that was what it said on the sign) to a mutilated prom queen, before signing on as George’s shop assistant, resplendent in red-soaked apron and chef’s hat over her raw, flayed flesh. Classes the place up a bit.

To complete the effect, costumed visitors are given a choice when they knock at my door. They say “Trick or Treat,” and I say “Candy or Meat?” Because, yes, every year, I have a supply of lunchmeat packets as well as a bowl of candy.

The reactions, from kids and parents alike, is always priceless. The sight of an eight-year-old running down the walk, waving a packet of ham, hollering “That lady gave us MEAT!” … the ones who’ve torn them open and scarfed them right there on the porch … the previously bored dad who was all “hey, I want some too!” … makes it memorable, makes it fun.

That, to me, is what Halloween is all about. And it’s all thanks to a guy called George.

Christine Morgan grew up in the high desert and moved to a cool rainy coast as soon as she could. Though anything but the outdoorsy type, she loves trees and water … preferably viewed through a cozy window or from the deck of a cruise ship. Alaska, Norway, Scotland, and Germany/Austria are her vacation destinations of choice. Seeing the Northern Lights in person is on her bucket list. She’s currently three cats toward her eventual fate as a crazy cat lady; yes, she does talk to them, but don’t worry, she draws the line at knitting them little sweaters (because she can’t knit).

White Death

January 12, 1888 

When a day dawns warm and mild in the middle of a long cold winter, it’s greeted as a blessing, a reprieve. A chance for those who’ve been cooped up indoors to get out, do chores, run errands, send the children to school … little knowing that they’re only seeing the calm before the storm. 

The blizzard hits out of nowhere, screaming across the Great Plains like a runaway train. It brings slicing winds, blinding snow, plummeting temperatures. Livestock will be found frozen in the fields, their heads encased in blocks of ice formed from their own steaming breath. Frostbite and hypothermia wait for anyone caught without shelter. 

For the hardy settlers of Far Enough, in the Montana Territory, it’s about to get worse. Something else has arrived with the blizzard. Something sleek and savage and hungry. Wild animal or vengeful spirit from native legend, it blends into the snow and bites with sharper teeth than the wind. 

Spermjackers from Hell

Let’s summon a succubus, they said. It’ll be fun, they said… 

I have some friends and we had a crazy idea: let’s summon a demon. Not just any demon but a sexy devil chick that will do anything we want—even butt stuff. It’ll be easy. It’s not like it’s going to work. Monsters aren’t real. 

We were wrong. Really fucking wrong. 

The demon is not what we thought and it’s making horrible things happen. People are cutting into each other’s junk, some guy is fucking his dog, and sex slugs from Hell are raping us and stealing our semen in order to build a goddamn hive! 

We didn’t mean for any of this. But we’re gonna fix it… Just after a few more beers and bong hits. 

From Christine Morgan, author of Mythic Lust: the Minotaur, and The Raven’s Table: Viking Stories, comes a sleazy and deviant satire about sex, occultism, and nerd culture.

Lakehouse Infernal

Lake Misquamicus was an unremarkable lake in Florida, unremarkable that is until suddenly it was filled with six billion gallons of blood, bile, pus, piss, shit and …things… directly from the pits of Hell. First the public was in shock, then the government built a wall, and as time passed it became another urban legend. But for some, it has become a travel destination. Spring-breakers, drug-runners, and religious nuts. But a weekend getaway on the shores of Hell, may not be the safest idea… 

With an introduction by and officially endorsed by splatterpunk legend Edward Lee, LAKEHOUSE INFERNAL is an official entree in Lee’s infamous INFERNAL series. Christine Morgan expands on this universe with her own twist of hardcore horror tourism. 

The Raven’s Table: Viking Stories

Listen…

The furious clangor of battle. The harrowing singing of steel. The desperate cries of wounded animals. The gasps of bleeding, dying men. The slow, deep breathing of terrible things–trolls, giants, draugr–waiting in the darkness. The wolf’s wind howling, stalking like death itself. The carrion-crows, avaricious and impatient, circling the battle-ground, the Raven’s Table.

Listen…

The skald’s voice, low, canting, weaving tales of fate and heroism, battle and revelry. Of gods and monsters, and of the women and men that stand against them. Of stormy Scandinavian skies and settlements upon strange continents. Of mead-hall victories, funeral pyres, dragon-prowed ships, and gold-laden tombs. Of Ragnarok. Of Valhalla.

For a decade, author Christine Morgan’s Viking stories have delighted readers and critics alike, standing apart from the anthologies they appeared in. Now, Word Horde brings you The Raven’s Table, the first-ever collection of Christine Morgan’s Vikings, from “The Barrow-Maid” to “Aerkheim’s Horror” and beyond. These tales of adventure, fantasy, and horror will rouse your inner Viking.