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A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I encountered this story long ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The so-called seasonal visitors turn out to be the Allisons from the city, who occupy a particular isolated lakeside house every summer. During this visit, in place of returning to urban life, they decide to extend their stay for a month longer – an action that appears to alarm each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats a similar vague warning that no one has lingered by the water past the end of summer. Regardless, the Allisons are resolved to not leave, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The man who delivers the kerosene refuses to sell for them. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to the cottage, and when the Allisons try to go to the village, their vehicle won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the energy of their radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely within their rental and waited”. What are they anticipating? What do the locals understand? Every time I revisit the writer’s chilling and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the finest fright stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a pair travel to a common beach community where bells ring constantly, an incessant ringing that is bothersome and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying moment occurs after dark, when they opt to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the sea. The beach is there, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and salt, surf is audible, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It’s just profoundly ominous and whenever I go to the coast at night I think about this tale that destroyed the beach in the evening to my mind – positively.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the man is mature – go back to their lodging and learn why the bells ring, in a long sequence of confinement, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden meets dance of death pandemonium. It is a disturbing meditation about longing and decay, two people aging together as partners, the connection and violence and affection within wedlock.

Not only the most frightening, but likely among the finest short stories available, and a beloved choice. I read it in Spanish, in the debut release of Aickman stories to be published locally several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this narrative by a pool overseas a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I experienced cold creep within me. I also felt the thrill of excitement. I was working on my third novel, and I encountered an obstacle. I didn’t know whether there existed an effective approach to compose various frightening aspects the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, the main character, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in a city during a specific period. Notoriously, this person was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave who would never leave by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The deeds the story tells are horrific, but just as scary is the emotional authenticity. The character’s dreadful, broken reality is directly described in spare prose, identities hidden. You is plunged stuck in his mind, compelled to observe mental processes and behaviors that shock. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Starting this book is less like reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I was a somnambulist and later started having night terrors. Once, the terror involved a nightmare during which I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped a piece from the window, trying to get out. That building was decaying; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor became inundated, insect eggs dropped from above into the bedroom, and once a large rat ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I was no longer living at my family home, but the tale about the home high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to me, nostalgic as I was. This is a book concerning a ghostly noisy, emotional house and a young woman who ingests chalk from the shoreline. I adored the novel deeply and came back repeatedly to it, always finding {something