P.L. McMillan's Blog, page 10

Spoopy Writing Challenge - Day 3

Well, well, well. What’s a cutie like you doing on a blog like this? Oh wait, you’re here for the new story in my October writing challenge. Alright, fair enough. However, I am once again asking for your support. 

In pre-ordering my debut novella, Sisters of the Crimson Vine. Do it. Do it now.

DO IT!!!

Okay, ghosties and ghoulies, today’s prompt comes from Bryan Andrews:

You are digging in your garden, and you find a body. It’s yours.

So for my third story of my seven day spooky challenge, I bring you…

Sow Thy Garden Full of Ire

“Here you go, Mrs. Andrews.” Mr. Felling passed me the metal urn that contained my wife’s ashes. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

They’d all said that. “I’m sorry for your loss.” The cops who’d called me in to identify her body but covered for the drunk man who’d run her over, the priest who had only last week condemned our love in his sermon, the members of Irewood’s Women’s Brigade – all permed hair and judging eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss.” 

But they all lied.

And there would be no justice for my sweet Brynne. The cops ruled it an accident, didn’t even pretend to care. Jordan Hobbs. Killer, drunk, beloved son of a local business man. Off scot free.

Stepping out of the funeral home, I kept my gaze on the urn in my hands, avoided noticing all the eyes that watched me. All the people that hoped – with this tragedy – that I would move, leave their small town and take my otherness with me. 

“I only moved here for you, Brynne,” I told the urn as I set it on the passenger side seat. “You wanted to live in a small town and live out that cozy fantasy of owning a creaky old house with fireplaces and a library, knowing your neighbours, of having a garden.”

Passing through the streets of Irewood, I fought back the tears, the anger, the hate, the despair. Passing all the happy people, oblivious – or worse, happy that Brynne was dead. This small town choked with nepotism and close-mindedness, cursed with a born hatred of those they considered outsiders. Crossing city limits, I drove out into the countryside – copses of vibrantly coloured trees, yellowing grass drying out for winter, baled hay, contented horses. 

I took her home. My beloved, my first girlfriend after coming out, my wife. Now dead. 

My Brynne, nothing but ash. 

Our home was a large two-storey farmhouse. Arguably too big for just us two, but Brynne had talked about settling and then fostering a whole litter of kids. She’d been a foster kid and got lucky with a good family, it was her dream to pass that luck onto others. She’d never had the chance to be a mother. 

Parking, I took her urn into the house and put her above one of the fireplaces she’d found so dear. Then, with daylight burning, I went out into the back. To work on the garden. 

#

Thirteen days later, the pain of grief was still raw and so were the injuries to my hands. Still I dug in the garden. I had, after all, promised Brynne one. The air was chill and crisp, smelling of molding leaves and damp earth. Clouds streaked the sky like knife slashes, the sunlight was watery and weak. 

With every thud of my shovel striking dirt, a memory was unearthed. 

The confusing moment when I’d met Brynne at a work function and been so wildly attracted to her that I was speechless on my boyfriend’s arm. 

The terrifying moment when I’d confessed my feelings for her after a year of friendship and a bitter breakup with my then-fiance. 

That beautiful moment standing across from her by the river where we said our vows in front of our families. 

Her lips, her smile. Her eyes, her laughter. Her terrible cooking and amazing desserts. Brynne. My Brynne. 

Deep enough. I’d dug deep enough. Dropping the shovel, I knelt and began to scoop dirt with my hands. A hole four feet wide, five and three quarters feet long, three feet deep. Removing the last fistfuls of dirt, I found a body.

Slim, pale skin marked with a dark birthmark on the left hip, soft curly dark hair cut just above the shoulders. And a face that I was well familiar with, having looked at it every day in the bathroom mirror for the last thirty three years. 

I brushed the remaining dirt from her body, my body, for she was me as much as I was her. She opened her eyes and sat up, giving me a sad smile. 

“You should put some clothes on,” I said and made to reach for the shovel, but she stopped me. 

“I’ll unbury the next one,” she said, standing and taking the shovel. “You should take care of that.”

I looked down at my hands, blood had seeped through the thick bandages, the pain kept barely at bay by the Vicodin I’d taken hours before. Ten fingers severed at the middle knuckle, ten mounds in the place where I’d promised to plant a garden for my Brynne. 

She, my twin, my sister, my child, went to the nearest mound and began to dig. 

#

Eleven of us at the edge of town. Eleven of us armed with sickles, silver sharp in the moonlight. The town was quiet, asleep. 3 a.m. The Witching Hour.

We marched on the town. The eleven of us, an army of me, consumed by anger and hate and rage, but most of all sorrow. An army forged from the darkest wish of a grief-bound heart, under a sickle fall moon, and fed with blood. 

Comfortable in their own compliance, we found doors unlocked and windows open. We each crept into these unguarded houses and found those sleeping within. We would not kill them all. No. We would only take one half of a whole, sunder conjoined hearts in two, as they had mine and Brynne’s.

We knew we would die. It was small town America, after all. They would eventually get to their guns, they would kill us just as they killed Brynne and her dreams and her love and her smile. But we would make them remember, we would bring them the reckoning that was a long time coming. We would make them think twice when the next hopeful couple moved in. 

So from house to house we slunk, leaving screams and wails behind us. Our silver sickles now stained red with retribution.

A harvest to remember.

Eee, that was a bit of a dark one, wasn’t it? Here’s Poe dressed as a shark to act as a palette cleanser and I’ll see you tomorrow!

x PLM

Spoopy Writing Challenge - Day 2

Welcome back, ghouls and ghosts, it’s day 2 of my spooky October writing challenge!

I had some exciting news yesterday – but I can’t give details about that story acceptance yet, so you’ll just have to suffer in anticipation.

However, if you haven’t already, you can grab a pre-order of AHH! That's What I Call Horror: An Anthology of '90s Horror, which features my blockbuster horror story, “Return to Gray Springs: Blockbuster Blues”!

DO IT

Besides writing a 90s horror story, I also contributed some of the interior art for each story, as well as designed the paperback page break. If you get a special edition signed copy, you also get merch! So don’t wait! 

Now onto the story. This prompt was given to me by Rebecca Cuthbert:

Person’s parent or grandparent passes away. They have to clean out the house. There’s a partial bottle of whiskey. The person decides to have a drink. But the bottle of booze is haunted and now the person is possessed by their grandparent.

So for my second story of my seven day spooky challenge, I bring you…

Granny Mae, The Witch Bitch

My grandmother’s house was a ramshackle affair, single storey, peeling paint, broken shutters, overgrown yard that probably drove her neighbours crazy. No wonder the neighbourhood kids called her a witch. And they didn’t even know her. 

‘Cause I did and I knew she was worse.

My wrists still ached with phantom memory pains of her smacking them if I spoke too loudly, if I reached for an extra cookie (never freshly baked in that house), or if I left the chores too long. Yet my dad always made me visit, every other weekend, no matter how much I cried.

I took a key from my pocket, walking over the cracked front walk, and unlocked the door. I was still seething. Even after her death, Granny Mae was punishing me. 

Her will demanded my subservience. I was the only granddaughter and “cleaning was a woman’s job” stated her will, nothing would be paid out to the living relatives until the house was clean. 

Dad was convinced Granny Mae was rich and so, here I was, on a bright autumn Saturday morning, to clean that bitch’s house. 

The door opened, revealing the living room. 

It was just like I remembered, the last time I was there over thirteen years ago. No TV, no couch (Granny Mae didn’t like or even want visitors, besides me), just a buckling armchair, a stool (God, I hated that thing), and books. Books overflowing shelves, in waist high piles on the floor, and bottles. Bottles of wine and whiskey and scotch, all empty of alcohol – though some had been filled with sand and stones, bird bones and beads. 

I sighed. This was going to take a while. 

Beyond the living room was the kitchen, all the counter space taken up by empty boxes and more empty bottles. The dining room didn’t have any furniture besides a folded cot – where I slept every weekend for years as a kid, surrounded by books. I continued on, feeling tired already just looking at all the shit I needed to box up or throw out. 

A hall off the kitchen led to the back of the house, to the lone bedroom and bathroom. The bathroom was the single uncluttered room in the house, the white tiles were practically blindingly clean. The bedroom was as choked with books as the rest of the house, but had extras. Twigs had been tied together in strange configurations and hung on the walls, alongside dried herbs and flowers. Garlic bulbs hung on ropes in front of the window, like a weird hippie curtain. The bed was neatly made, as if waiting for Granny Mae to come back and find rest. 

But she wouldn’t be coming back and I couldn’t find any piece of me to feel bad about it.

She’d been found a few blocks from here, three weeks ago in the early morning, stabbed. A mugging gone wrong – though, knowing Granny Mae, maybe it’d been one of the many people she’d pissed off.

I dropped the garbage bags I’d been carrying on the bed. May as well start here and get rid of her clothes first. I turned to the dresser and stopped. 

The top of her dresser was clear and clean, besides for a single bottle of half finished whiskey. Cuthbert’s Finest, 20 year. It sat, catching the light and casting amber hues across the wall. I smiled a bit. Granny Mae would hate it if I had some, so I picked it up, uncorked it, and took a swig.

It was as I swallowed that I saw the salt circle on the dresser that had surrounded the bottle. I looked down at the bottle and saw that a strange symbol – like an ankh with an eye above it – had been scratched at the base of the neck. 

The whiskey hit my belly, my nerves buzzed, and the hair on my arms rose. I could smell Granny Mae’s deodorant, I felt a breath on the side of my neck, and then I fell.

Except I wasn’t falling, I sank behind in my own mind. My control, my self, my being shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until I was an observer in my own head, looking out my eyes, but detached. 

In this way, I watched my hands put the bottle back on the dresser and sweep away the salt circle. 

Granny Mae. I can’t explain how I knew. But I knew. As if in a dream when knowledge is available to the dreamer and it is just true, in the same way I knew that Granny Mae had taken over. 

She turned and took us to her closet, throwing open the door, and shoving aside the hanging shirts. Kneeling, she pressed a hand to a small section of the wall. Something clicked, then a corner of the wall swung open, revealing a deep compartment. 

If I could gasp, or scream, or question, I would have. But I was a silent passenger in my own body as Granny Mae pulled out a sawed off shotgun, a box of shells, and three grenades. 

Last, she pulled out a weathered leather journal. 

Granny Mae stuffed the weapons into a black backpack, which she pulled on. The journal she carried to the bed and placed it on the neatly made covers. She tapped the cover twice. 

Then we left, through the rooms and back out the front door, down the walk to the road. 

Down the street, Granny Mae walked us both, taking us to her death site. I recognized it. Dad had driven me and my brothers by it and pointed it out. 

“This is why you try and make nice with people, kids. So you don’t end up like Granny Mae,” he’d said.

Now, I never liked Granny Mae either, but even to me it’d sounded cold. She’d only been dead for a day at that point, her blood still a rusty stain on the sidewalk. 

And today, the stain was just a ghost of a mark. Granny Mae didn’t even look down at it as we walked over, going straight up the front walk to a massive McMansion, surrounded by carefully tended bushes and flowerbeds. 

Without any hesitation, she knocked on the door. This can’t be real, I thought. I’m dreaming. The whiskey was drugged. But I wasn’t and it hadn’t been. I knew this to be true.

The front door opened. A man stood in front of me and I recognized him. The mayor. His face was plastered everywhere, up for re-election. 

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking me up and down, his hungry gaze making my skin crawl.

“Oh um, hi!” Granny Mae chirped, twirling a length of my hair around my index finger. “I’m doing, like, a school report and was hoping I could interview you?”

Is this how she thinks college students sound? Like valley girls? I was embarrassed for both of us. And terrified. Scared of what Granny Mae was planning, considering what she’d packed. 

The mayor smiled – Johnny Borne was his name – and licked his lips. “Sure, honey. Why don’t you come in?”

Granny Mae gave a little girl giggle and I became convinced that death had made her insane, that I was insane. We followed Mayor Borne inside his McMansion, the front room was all decadent marble and sculptures. 

“So, what’s your report about, honey?” Borne asked. 

“Aren’t you going to bring me somewhere more comfortable?” replied Granny Mae and if she wasn’t already dead, I would have promised to murder her. 

The Mayor grinned and led us deeper into the house, to a back office – walnut, leatherbound books, and plush chairs galore – gesturing us inside. Ceiling high windows looked out onto a perfectly manicured backyard and pool. 

Granny Mae set her backpack down on a chair and leaned against it, cocking a hip. “Drink?”

Borne ate my body up in a glance and I wished I had the ability to vomit. What is with old dudes being so gross? Then he went over to a side table, where a decanter set sat. Granny Mae didn’t waste any time. She’d always been someone to get straight to the point. 

Pulling the shotgun out, she levelled it at Borne’s back. He turned back, glasses in each hand, and froze.

“What the hell?” he snapped. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Finishing what I started, Johnny,” Granny Mae spat and for a brief moment my voice sounded exactly like hers. 

Borne went pale. “No, it’s impossible!”

“Let’s not worry about what is and isn’t impossible, kid.” Granny Mae smirked. “Open the door.”

“Go fuck yourself, Mae.”

Granny Mae sighed. The same sigh she used every time before smacking my wrist, or yelling at me, and that’s when I knew Johnny Borne would be regretting his words. 

The shotgun went off, I’d never shot a gun before and I was shocked at its power, at the recoil. Borne went down, his left knee a crimson ruin. Granny Mae strode to him, grabbed his left wrist as he wailed, and dragged him over to a bookcase. Grabbing his collar, she yanked him up, and shoved him against the shelves, then she pressed the barrels of the gun against his neck.

Borne was crying, his chest hitching with tears. “Please don’t kill me, Mae! I swear, it wasn’t my idea! It was hers! I swear!”

“Open the door, kid, or I’ll paint your fancy fake books with your blood.”

The mayor nodded and reached for a crystal skull set between two copies of Dante’s Inferno. He slipped the index and middle fingers of his right hand in either socket, which lit up, revealing fingerprint scanners. These scanned, beeped, flashed green. Granny Mae stepped back as the bookcase slid back and to the right, revealing a descending stone staircase. 

“Please, Mae.” The mayor had fallen to the floor without his support. “It was her, not me! Her!”

She looked down at him. Smiled. I felt bad for him then. Granny Mae’s smiles were the worst. “Yeah, I know it, kid. You ain’t smart enough. However, you did stab me and for that – ” The next shotgun blast took his head, silencing his tears. 

Down the stairs we went. Down and down and down. The air grew chilly, damp. Lights set in green-glass sconces guided us. Finally, at the bottom of the stairs was a small room that contained only a massive golden door. 

Granny Mae reached into her bag and took out the grenades. Holy shit, what is happening? This is nuts! Then she slowly, carefully, quietly, opened the door. 

Inside was a huge sunken chamber, the middle of which contained a clear pool of green water that reflected the torchlight in golden flickers. Around its border were eggs, huge iridescent eggs waiting to hatch.

A woman stood in the middle of the pool, embracing a giant snake. The snake was massive, coiling around her limbs, and rather than a snake’s visage, it had a somewhat human-like face, albeit deformed and grotesque. Fangs stuck out from its lips and its eyes glittered black in the flickering light, showing a malevolent intelligence.

“Hey hun, am I interrupting something?” Granny Mae used the same tone she’d used on me when she’d catch me on my phone, rather than cleaning. 

The woman turned, arms still wrapped around her lover. “Who — oh.” 

She smirked. “Mae. Didn’t expect to see you back here.”

Behind my back, Granny Mae’s grip tightened on the grenades. “I’ll be fair, Lisbeth. When I came here last, I never expected this and, for sure, it caught me by surprise. You play the helpless victim quite well.”

Lisbeth shrugged, snapped her fingers. The eggs around the pool began to shiver, the life inside of them roiled, readying to wake. “Let’s be real, Mae, you are – were old. Old-fashioned. So you assumed my husband was to blame. You deserved what you got.”

I mean she isn't wrong about you, Granny. Granny Mae sighed. Whether at the woman’s statement or mine, I didn’t know. 

“Either way, I can’t leave you and your spawn here to eat up the town. I do still have family,” she replied. 

“Cute. Protecting a family that hates you.” Lisbeth stroked the flank of her lover, who hissed. “Whose body is that anyways? I’d hate to kill her without knowing her name.”

“Grenade,” replied Granny Mae.

“What?” Lisbeth frowned.

The grenades bounced along the stone floor, one came to rest near a shivering egg, two skittered to the corners of the rooms, and she let one drop right by my feet. Granny Mae didn’t wait, turning and sprinting up the stairs. My heart thundered in my chest, my lungs heaved as we raced towards the exit. 

The woman screamed, her hate and anger chasing us. Granny Mae glanced back once, just as the grenades exploded, shaking the whole building. The snake man was just behind us, his face snarled up with rage, his fangs bared and dripping poison. Then a block of concrete fell from the ceiling, crushing him to the stairs. The staircase crumbled, one or two of the grenades must have destroyed some vital support section or beam, because now Granny Mae was racing against the destruction. 

Despite how much my body ached, how my lungs burned, she never stopped. She fought through the pain and stress, throwing us through the open door way as the stairs completely gave way and the passage was filled with debris. 

Even then, she didn’t stop. She carried us out onto the backyard, over the fence, through the back streets, and back to her home. Only then, inside and safe from witnesses, did she allow my body to collapse to the floor. 

We rested there for a while, then she pushed us up again. Took us back to her bedroom. 

“Damn but it feels good to be young again,” she said to herself, or me, I don’t know. 

She picked up the bottle of Cuthbert’s Finest. “One more for the road.”

And with a gulp, she was gone, and I fell back into myself, into my aching body, my burning lungs, and I fell to the floor, dropping the whiskey. Crying.

#

It took a week to get Granny Mae’s house in order. I let the relatives pick over and take what they wanted (which wasn’t anything, I’m pretty sure they were just hoping to find jewelry or treasures), but I kept the journal secret. The journal Granny Mae had placed on her bed and tapped, to make sure I’d look at it. 

A journal that outlined who she had been, what she had done, and all the things she’d killed that went bump in the night. 

Oh and it turned out she did have a shit ton of money. And it all went to me. 

I can’t say I grew to love Granny Mae. She was still a bitch. 

But I guess I could understand her just a little.

And with what she showed me in her journal, I learned to be a lot more wary of the shadows of the world.

I hope you enjoyed this little tale! And make sure to come back tomorrow for the next!

x PLM

Spoopy Writing Challenge - Day 1

Well hello, dearest ghouls and ghosts! 

Today marks day one of my writing challenge, which will last for seven days and seven nights, in which you will receive seven stories written by yours truly, based on seven prompts sent to me by you, dear readers! So be sure to check back every day for that new story and feel free to send me a prompt, if you haven’t already! There’s still time!

I also want to remind you that – in case you’re ravenous for more PLM fiction than this challenge can provide – my debut collection is available right now and my debut novella is up for pre-order! Check them out! 

Debut Novella Debut Collection

Now for the first prompt. This one was given to me by Nick Diak (and yes Nick, I named the character after you):

Hard boiled detective story during the heat death of the universe

So for the first story of my seven day spooky challenge, I bring you…

Do The Broken Hearted Dream of Entropic Paradise?

I knew she was trouble, the moment she walked into my office. The pulsing neon lights from the corridor haloed her in frantic colours, the screaming laughter and cries of those trying to drink or fuck away their sorrows and grief over the slow, chilling death of the universe gave chase. She brought in the smell of exotic fruits and tobacco. Her eyes blazed orange with cyber-vision in the dim light of my office.

“Seeker Nick Slade?” Her voice wavered musically, the effect of some kind of cybernetic enhancement, I would guess. 

I didn’t answer, if she was here, then she knew me. No one came into my office by accident. Instead cracking a CaffCaffpill and snorting the bitter powder within. Something about the way she smiled made me think I’d be up all night.

She held out her hand, a holo-display photo of a young girl flamed to life above her palm. “I need you to find her.”

“Sister?”

“She’s my daughter, Ana.”

“I can start tomorrow. It won’t be cheap though.” I was lying. The caffeine was already kicking in. I’d be buzzing like the station’s core for the next sixteen hours.

Plus I was known in this Block as someone who never turned down a job.

“Tonight. Tomorrow will be too late. I’ll pay whatever you want.” She sat on the edge of my desk and set a charge card down. 

I held my hand over it, transferring the funds. Two million credits. I didn’t show the surprise on my face. The transfer details named her. Eloise Toussaint, the daughter of this space station’s Commander. 

“Where’d ya see her last?”

“Her father will have taken her here.” A ping resonated in my internal receptors. Sent, received. 

#

She was still, almost perfectly, except her breath. My Maude. Thirteen years slumbering after taking a lazbolt in the spine that was meant for me. Thirteen years of limbo at the hands of a husband too cowardly to let her go. I touched the back of her warm hand, brushed away a lock of her blond hair. My ritual, my good luck charm, my love. Her life support system beeped as I left the private medbay room to finish the job.

Company medical bills wouldn’t pay themselves after all.

# 

Toussaint’s ping led to me to abandoned Block 13. Only Blocks 1 and 2 were active, the other eighteen were echoing towers of dust, despair, and darkness. Here the streets were pitch black, silent, lifeless. I lit my own way with my lamp-lite ocular implants and my metal feet thundered over the rusted corridor floors.

Life support still supplied air and minimal warmth, but everyone had moved on, just like the rest of the cosmos. A slow laying down, the release of effort, a final sigh before the end. The space station Morimanes was a complex haunted by the memories of better times and those left behind to watch the universe die. 

In the distance, somewhere deep within the Block, my enhanced ears caught someone weeping. Someone who sought out the darkness like a tomb, to find solace, to find finality. My entire body – the bio-parts and the cyber-parts both – buzzed with the CaffCaffpill and with the excitement of a job, of having a purpose. 

I stood in front of the reinforced doors that blocked my way into Block 13’s engineering sector. For most, this would be a problem. But I’d been a Company mercenary, a killer, and that came with perks – even after I defected. 

I jammed my fingers against the crease between the doors and pressed. A moment, I clenched my jaw, activated the gears in my chest, my arms. The tubes of xomite just beneath my skin flared a sickly azure, buzzing my nerves. My chest burned as the mini-core the Company had implanted next to my heart revved up. The metal surface of the doors crumpled enough to let me slip my hands between them, allowed me to force the heavy metal apart far enough, just enough for me. 

Inside were lights. Not the standard steady stream of halolights, but flickering illumination. Flames. I smelled the smoke, the chemicals used to fuel the fire. 

Deactivating my eyelight, I stepped through the gap I’d created. I picked up the distant sound of voices, rhythmic, almost soothing. Carefully, I made my way deeper into the sector.

Around me, metal siloes towered, connected by chaotic tubing and metal grating. I’d checked the schematics I’d found on the general station server before leaving my office. I knew that, ahead of me, would be the cooling pit. That’s where the light was. That’s where the sound was.

Closer still, I picked out details.

A mass of people. Thirty, forty, no sixty at least. All dressed in strange draping fabric, as light as novas and as ethereal as the rings around a gas giant. I slunk around a silo, trying to stay silent, hidden. 

The crowd surrounded the cooling pit, now empty of water. Something throbbed in the bottom. It beat like that of a human heart, a deep sound that shivered the entire sector. The air reeked of rot, of sweetness, of something acrid, and sterile, and complex all at the same time. It made my head hurt. 

Fires burned in barrels all around the pit, filling the air with oily smoke and causing my eyes to water. 

I flexed my hands, clenched them into fists. I’d taken more than this in a fight, working for the Company, working to clear boundary colonies that stood in the way of profit. I could take these people. As far as I could tell, none had weapons. But I had to find the girl first. 

There. A small figure bound and suspended over the pit. I’d heard of groups like this. Folks who’d lost their humanity along with their hope and sacrificed each other with the idea that some distant god might be listening and would stave off death another day, month, year even. 

I primed my inner core so it and I would be ready. 

The people raised their hands, howling. Their cries rose and fell with the throbbing of whatever was in the pit. 

I stepped forward. In my experience, I knew only a few would try and fight. Most Citizens these days were cowards, they would run. 

As I approached, my clanging metal feet gave me away. The people turned. They stepped away, silent. Feral Citizens too afraid of death to stand up against me and my glowing fists. At the edge of the cooling pit I stopped. 

There was no girl. Only rags wrapped around a metal canister. 

But in the pit. 

In the pit was a depth beyond measure. An obsidian star darker than the space between stars. Golden waves in a sea of absolute numbing horror. A manufactured black hole.

Small yet. Just the size of an egg but as it pulsed, gilt shockwaves slapped against the sides of the pit making the sector shiver. I could feel its pull, even now, the hunger of its event horizon. 

I spun. I had to escape.

In front of me stood Eloise Toussaint, naked, glyphs painted in black oil across her chest and down her limbs. 

“The girl!” I babbled, trying to buy time, as I looked past her, sought an escape. 

“I don’t have a daughter,” she replied with that damn smile of hers. “But I have a need.”

I raised a fist. Her eyes sparked a hotter orange and I felt a brilliant arc of pain in the back of my head, tasted fried wires in the air. She’d bioshocked me. A black-ops, Company secret clearance level cybernetic. Damn, but it must have cost a fortune. 

Toussaint stepped forward. “We needed this.” She pressed her palm against my chest, right above my beating heart.

Right above my Company-issued power core. 

A core with enough juice to turn a baby black hole into a monster.

I tried to lift my hands, I pictured wrapping them around her neck, squeezing the life from her. But they were useless, fried along with my operating chip. 

“With your sacrifice, we take our own path to the event horizon,” she said. “We won’t wait for the end. We will bring it to us on our own terms.”

And she pushed. 

On rigid, locked legs, I tipped over backwards. I felt the pull immediately. The black hole’s grip on my body and the event horizon’s laughter in my ears as I stretched and stretched.

Caught in a moment’s eternity, I looked up at her. At Eloise Toussaint, dealer of death. I knew she was trouble, the moment she walked into my office.

A rich woman decked out in high classed cybernetics, with a thirst for control and power, and legs that went on for days.

Though, I suppose, everything caught in the event horizon went on for days.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my first story of my writing challenge! Be sure to stop by tomorrow and catch the next one!

x PLM

Ahhhh! 90s Horror!

NEW FLASH! I am here with a special end of week bulletin!

Do you like 90s? Do you like nostalgia? Do you just like me? If so, or even if not (you’re here already, after all), check this out:

Edited by Chelsea Pumpkins, with a cover by Cassie Daley, and a foreword by Max Booth III — AHH! That's What I Call Horror: An Anthology of '90s Horror comes out January 25th, 2023 and will feature my blockbuster horror story, “Return to Gray Springs: Blockbuster Blues”!

Brand spankin’ new fiction from S.E. Denton, Bridget D. Brave, Chelsea Pumpkins, Christopher O’Halloran, Caleb Stephens, Edith Lockwood, C.B. Jones, Mathew Wend, P.L. McMillan, Carson Winter, Patrick Barb, J.W. Donley, J.V. Gachs, and Damien B. Raphael.

Set during the decade of flannel shirts and neon dolphin Trapper Keepers, Ahh! That’s What I Call Horror this is guaranteed to be all that and a bag of haunted chips.

You won’t need a dial-up connection to reach the beyond in this time-warp to the ‘90s. With undead grunge rock icons, menacing action figures, family sitcoms gone very wrong, and more: these terror tales will return you to the end of the old millennium.

How will you get back?

Like, who says you will?

— Ahh! That’s What I Call Horror back cover text

Pre-orders are available now! You can even order a signed copy!

Pre-order Now! Signed Copy with Merch!

This was an amazing project to be a part of. As well as writing a 90s tale of terror, I also contributed custom illustrations for some of the stories, designed the page break, and some of the merch!

My story, “Return to Gray Springs: Blockbuster Blues”, is chockful of VHS tapes, mysterious happenings, and sinister secrets. Colin works at the only Blockbuster in town and when the video tapes start coming back weird, he knows he has a mystery to solve...

Here’s the custom art I did for my tale:

So, don’t wait! Get your pre-orders in today!

Also, don’t forget — I’ll be joining Timber Ghost Press for a live panel event this Saturday (tomorrow)! Make sure to stop by! Click here for more information.

x PLM

Join Me This Saturday!

Hello dear reader!

Got any plans on Saturday? Wanna watch the live panel I’ll be participating in? It’ll be October 15th, 6-7 pm MDT, held online and there are giveaways!

Learn more

That’s right! Giveaways, authors, and fun! So why not stop by and say hi? I’ll be chatting horror, writing, and my upcoming novella, Sisters of the Crimson Vine!

Can’t wait to see you!

x PLM

The Deep House: Movie Review

Hello, dear reader!

It is spooky season, right and proper! And I am so excited for it! Sweater weather, hot drinks, Halloween, and also my October writing challenge! If you haven’t been around for those, here’s the low-down: for one entire week leading up to Halloween, I write a story a day based on prompts I recieve from readers just like you! Ao make sure to watch my blog for that!

Before we dive into the review, let me remind you: pre-orders for my debut novella Sisters of the Crimson Vine, are live! Get your pre-orders on the Timber Ghost Press website now!

Now onwards! As usual, I kept my spoilery bits under the spoiler line, so avoid that area if you haven’t watched the movie yet!

Also, thank you to J.S. for recommending this movie!

The Movie

2021 supernatural horror film, The Deep House, was written and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, and stars James Dagger and Camille Rowe.

The film centers around a young couple from New York, who are currently travelling Europe and creating spooky content for their Youtube channel. On a quest to find a sanatorium submerged in a French lake, they are disappointed to see it’s actually a popular tourist spot. Lucky for them, an old man offers to take them to a different part of the lake, which contains an old mansion.

Once there, the two dive into the lake, on a quest for watery spooks! Of course, not everything is as it seems. It is a horror movie, after all.

The Review

Right off the bat, I was a little worried about how the film would go since it seems like it would all be shaky found footage, and the characters seemed annoying. But, happily, I was proven wrong. Only some parts of the movie are food footage, the majority is traditional. The characters also grew on me, especially Camille.

The film was deliciously claustrophobic since it was filmed almost entirely underwater. I felt so tense watching it! The setting, the style of filming, it was perfect.

The tension builds straight away as their equipment malfunctions in the sunken house and they begin to discover the dark secrets within. I really got pulled into the story and the characters’ struggles. The movie made me feel breathless at times!

Also, call out to the Lovecraft themes woven throughout!

Overall, just a great haunted house film with a unique twist. If you watch it and end up feeling a little turned off by the beginning, I would definitely recommend pushing through. It’s worth it!

8/10

x PLM

  

SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

Okay, I absolutely loved how Lovecraftian this movie ones. The mansion being home to a family cult, flooded but not dead, the quoting of Lovecraft even, the title (perhaps? Deep house = deep ones?).

Also the ending was bleaker than I had expected. I had thought that maybe Camille would survive, especially since the old man comments on the symbol on her oxygen tank being a good omen. Surprise, surprise, it wasn’t so. Near the beginning of the movie, it shows Camille practicing holding her breath under water for the future dive. I assumed there would be a moment when Camille would have to hold her breath in a scramble for the surface and it was definitely set up that way.

Only she doesn’t make it. She dies within sight of the surface. It broke my heart! Hey, but at least she didn’t die in the house, right? I got the impression that those who died inside the house experienced a watery hell for the rest of eternity, so at least she didn’t have that.

The easter egg at the end of the credits was also a cheery on top. The fact that the old man would continue to bring sacrifices to the lake, to keep his undead family undead.

Overall, I liked the bleak ending. It was fitting for the movie.

Interview: Caleb Stephens

Today I interview Caleb Stephens about his debut collection, If Only a Heart and Other Tales of Terror, out now. Besides the collection, we also chat about the writing process and balancing life, work, family, and writing! Check it out!

And don’t forget, you find my review here!

If Only a Heart and Other Tales of Terror: Collection Review

Oh sheesh, here’s a late one for ya, dear reader!

Also, before I dive right in, just wanted to remind you that there are still limited edition copies of my debut novella, Sisters of the Crimson Vine, available on the Timber Ghost Press website!

The Author

Caleb Stephens is a dark fiction author writing from somewhere deep in the Colorado mountains. His short stories have appeared in multiple publications and podcasts, including Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, Tales to Terrify, MetaStellar, The Dread Machine, Nocturnal Transmissions, and more. His story “The Wallpaper Man” is forthcoming as a short film from Falconer Film & Media. You can learn more at his website and follow him on Twitter. — Stephens’ website

The Collection

Just released today and with an awesome cover by Luke Spooner, If Only a Heart and Other Tales of Terror contains thirteen tales of horror that share a similar theme of family and loss/grief. Each of the stories has a custom black and white illustration by yours truly, plus I also wrote the foreword!

An unlikely friendship is born in the red clay dirt of a trailer park. Two latchkey kids who will do anything to hold onto one other, despite the consequences.

A disabled boy and his sister move into a house by the sea, one haunted by a demon living in the walls.

A father on a camping trip in a remote section of Appalachia wakes to find his daughter missing, taken by something not quite human.

A traumatized teenager stumbles across a strange slide at a waterpark—one only he can see.

If Only a Heart and Other Tales of Terror is a visceral collection of thirteen stories that explore what happens when we open ourselves to others and dare to let them in. There are monsters on these pages, yes, ones whose teeth cut deep, but never as deep as the teeth of the monsters in the mirror. — If Only a Heart Amazon page description

The Review

I can already hear you, dear reader. “You obviously loved this collection, I mean you did the foreword for it and everything.” you say, slurping your delicious tea.

Well, yeah. You caught me.

9/10

Review over, move along!

Just kidding, let’s dive into what about this collection really struck me.

Overall, each story has been well-polished and designed, most are heavy with emotional tension and dread, while others hit you hard with the horror. Caleb does an amazing job of weaving in super heavy topics, like child death, losing a spouse, guilt, and grief, along with the horror of each story without bogging down the pacing or suspense.

Let’s check out some of my favourites:

“If Only a Heart” — this story dives deep into the lengths a parent will go to in order to protect their child. There’s a reason it’s the title story. Captivating, poignant, and rich with tension.

“Welcome to Camp Khelani!” — playing off 80s tropes and that delicious slasher movie vibe, this story is equal parts dark as it is humourous.

“The Crowing” — this story first appeared in Howls from the Dark Ages, which I co-edited, and I loved it then, I love it now. Definitely my number one favourite, it features the supernatural, strong female characters, and the grim consequences of a sacrifice long past made. Also check out the art I made for it:

“Shadow Puppets” — a young boy tries to befriend the new girl who happens to have a dark secret. I never saw the end coming with this one!

So each story does share a similar thematic vibe, but each one stands strong on its own, and the thematic elements never get old. Every story is poignant, every story is powerful, and every story is unique. So if you are looking for genuine, well-written horror that is as heartbreaking as it is spine-tingling, grab If Only a Heart today. You won’t regret it.

x PLM

p.s. make sure to come back on Thursday! I’ll be interviewing Caleb Stephens on his process and the making of this collection!

Call of the Sea: Game Review

Well howdy, dear reader, and welcome back to my weekly review of all things horror.

Lately I’ve been trying out new types of content, maybe you’ve noticed I’ve been doing video interviews of people in the horror industry — if you haven’t seen those interviews yet, you can find them in the new “Interviews” tab I added to the nav bar at the top of my site!

Otherwise, I am still writing and super excited for my debut novella, Sisters of the Crimson Vine, coming out this December! If you want to check it out and pre-order your copy, visit the Timber Ghost Press website!

Anyway, that’s enough about me, onward to the game review!

The Game

Developed by Out of the Blue and published by Raw Fury in 2020, Call of the Sea is a first-person adventure video game available on Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation. Set in the 1930s, you play as Norah, who is trying to find her missing husband on a mysterious island. Heavy on plot, the game has no combat, but a whole lot of puzzles.

An otherworldly tale of mystery and love — The search takes place on a strange but beautiful island in the South Pacific, filled with secrets waiting to be unearthed. It is an otherworldly tale of mystery, adventure, and self-discovery. — Call of the Sea website

Call of the Sea is the debut title for Out of the Blue, an independent studio in Spain, and the team consisted of twelve people. The founder of Out of the Blue, Tatiana Delgado, said that they drew inspiration from Lovecraft, SOMA, and Myst among others.

Review

I should call out right away that, although this game features a lot of Lovecraftian elements, it’s not really a horror game. Still, I really enjoyed it and I loved spotting the little Lovecraftian elements throughout the game. I love games with well-developed story and well-rounded characters, Call of the Sea had both. It also had an amazing aesthetic and beautiful settings, it was a feast for the eyes.

I got sucked in right away and loved exploring the island with Norah, as we searched for her missing husband. The story slowly unfolds, revealing the secret behind Norah’s illness and the fate of her beloved husband. The ending was as perfect as it was poignant.

The only potential downside for me was that some of the puzzles weren’t easy and I did have to look up help for some, but that may just be me being bad at puzzles.

I would recommend this game for people looking for a story-based game that leans more on puzzles and plot than combat. The game is very linear and, while there tension since Norah’s husband is missing, there’s not a lot of suspense as there isn’t a threat of danger. For some that might be a downside, but for me, it made for very cozy gameplay.

10/10

x PLM

Interview: Split Scream Panel

Hello hello and welcome back!

As promised, here is the panel interview I did with Alex Ebenstein, Carson Winter, and Scott J. Moses. In this interview, we chat about writing, the horror industry, the publishing side of things, and Dread Stone Press’s upcoming double feature, Split Scream Volume 1, coming out September 27, 2022 and available for pre-order now!