Terror Incognita

by Jeffrey Thomas

13 TERRORS include...

* A deaf woman develops a strange bond with a bizarre lamp.
* A mysterious house in the forest conjures up the amorous dead.
* Another dimension awaits behind a sealed attic window.
* In Hell, once a year the damned are granted a bittersweet respite.
* The ghost of a madwoman creates a new body for herself from whats at hand.
* On a seemingly lifeless planet, a team of explorers discovers a displaced Victorian house.
* A shattered marriage opens the portal to a terrifying dream land.
* In a post-apocalyptic world, mutated infants are banished to an enigmatic island.
* A man on the brink of insanity finds himself tormented by alien beings.
* The grotesque subject matter of a series of T-shirts brings horror home to a callous man.
* The spirits of murdered animals find refuge in the body of a compassionate zoo worker.
* In the future, the notions of beauty become hideously distorted.
* A father murders his own daughter, but there has been a six-legged witness.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Collections

Nook

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed setting Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices from Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, Red Cells, and The New God. Thomas’s other short story collections include The Unnamed Country, Gods of a Nameless Country, The Endless Fall, Haunted Worlds, Worship the Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Unholy Dimensions, AAAIIIEEE!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Carrion Men, Voices from Hades, The Return of Enoch Coffin, and Entering Gosston. His other novels include The American, Boneland, Subject 11, Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, The Exploded Soul, The Nought, Thought Forms, Beyond the Door, Lost in Darkness, and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.

His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.

Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Zain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Mixed Bag.

I don’t like all of the stories that are in this book. Jeffrey Thomas is the author of this story collection.

Some of the stories are smoking! Some of the others are stale. This gives the reader a few four stars and one five star book. It also provides us with some two stars and a one star book.

Most importantly, most of the books contain three stars and that’s what we get.

Three stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Hail Hydra! ~Dave Anderson~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

But the sequence of all this was confusing. There was no great splashing of blood in the bathroom, so she had had to have slit her wrists after the electrocution. How, then, or when, had the woman managed that other bizarre flourish...that of wetting the hind feet of the alligator in her blood, and tracking its prints up two flights of stairs and on into the bathroom?

[M.T. Preston, Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, dark, gritty, disturbing, and sometimes hilarious foray into worlds just slightly askew from our own, recognizable but utterly terrifying when you draw back the curtain and see what lies beyond the realm of our comfortable, familiar reality. I can't recommend this enough. Thomas pulls you in with interesting and believable characters and takes you on a journey you won't soon forget. Do yourself a favor and read this now!

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had forgotten that I read this a number of years ago, but it didn’t keep me from enjoying it just as much. As demonstrated in Thomas’ story ‘Empathy’, there is a deep sadness, yet also hopefulness, at the core of all of his work which will always place him in my top authors list.

[Phillip Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved it. What a range, what an imagination.

[George Wilhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection of thirteen tales of the fantastic by Jeffrey Thomas. So often, story collections start off with a BANG, then run hot and cold in the middle and—if we’re lucky--end strongly. Not true of this one—all thirteen stories are extremely well written, wonderfully dark and disturbing, and widely varied in style and subject matter.

Thomas’ style is steeped in tradition—one often notices the touch of a master. “The Boarded Window” tells of an alternate dimension and “Through Obscure Glass” depicts one of those sinister small towns with horrible legacies. Both of these echo some of Lovecraft’s finest tales and the influence of Poe or Henry James is apparent in other more subtle, atmospheric entries. But this is not to say Thomas is derivative, only that his sophisticated style shows evidence of one cultured in the classics—an all too rare quality in much of modern horror fiction.

I also enjoyed “The House on the Plain” and “Disfigured” quite a bit, both bringing a nostalgic smile as I remembered great old sci-fi/horror shows like “The Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits”—both of these stories could easily be adapted to that kind of medium.

While I have cited a few specific titles, there is truly something here for every fan of speculative fiction. All of the tales are crafted with great skill, taking the time necessary to build vivid characters and wonderful settings before gradually building the horror or suspense.

Highly recommended!

[David Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic Jeffrey Thomas.

Brilliant.

Moving.

Provocative.

[Orange · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection of short horror stories rather tame.