Beware The Shadows

So in between my last post and now, I read a piece that was so good I had to immediately recommend it and share it with you.  It’s called He Waits, and it’s a long fiction piece by J.G. Faherty, one of the best voices today in horror. It’s a short work, so you can read it in an hour. Check it out. Really, really creepy and good. Great cover too.

Just in time for Christmas, you can win copies of That Which Should Not Be and The Void on Goodreads! For those of you who don’t know, Goodreads is the premier site on the web for anyone who loves good books. Think of it as the IMDB of the literary world. Anyone who loves to read should check it out and enter for a chance to win one of my novels. Good luck!

It is a rare thing, a horror movie that not only frightens but truly surprises. And that is why The Mist is one of my favorite movies of the last decade. Based on one of Stephen King’s best and most Lovecraftian stories, The Mist tells the story of the aftermath of a particularly bad storm on a small town in Maine. The town supports a military instillation, one that apparently is engaged in some top secret research. The storm unleashes something from behind, and whatever it is, it hides in the mist.

The main characters are trapped in a supermarket, with the mist surrounding them. And as the tension builds inside the building, the people inside become as dangerous as whatever is hiding in the shadows. The movie is loyal to the book, and this is yet another instance of Stephen King taking a simple but brilliant idea and crafting it into a stunningly horrifying masterpiece.

It’s rare that I worry too much about spoilers in a review. After all, it comes with the territory. But I don’t want to say too much about The Mist. It shouldn’t be ruined. There’s simply too much to enjoy.

The Mist is one of Frank Darabont’s greatest works, and many of the actors in the film went on to star in The Walking Dead. He is an uncompromising talent, as The Mist reveals in soul-crushing grandeur.

5 Stars

The King in Yellow is one of the most brilliant–and one of the most disappointing–collections of short stories I have ever read. The first five stories were tremendous, transcendent, stunning. I could not look away. The last few stories were woefully disappointing. It is clear to me that they were added solely to fill out a word count. It’s disappointing, but it does not diminish the power of those five stories. Pick the book up and read those stories. You will not be disappointed.

4 Stars

‘Tis the night – the night
Of the grave’s delight,
And the warlocks are at their play;
Ye think that without
The wild winds shout,
But no, it is they – it is they.

Arthur Cleveland Coxe

We stepped into the darkness, the sky as clear as it had been that day, but with a bright full moon serving as a poor imitation of the sun.  Its fragile light was enough to guide our steps to a place we had been countless times before.

Huntington Library stood like a monolith in the distance, a great cyclopean monstrosity of learning.  There had been rumors, of course.  Like all of witch-haunted Arkham it seemed, Huntington had a history.  It had been the first permanent building in that ancient town.  It was constructed in 1640, only four years after the founding of Harvard, and a full decade before Miskatonic University came into being.

Legend had it the people of Arkham had found something on that little mound above the river.  Something ancient and arcane, something built of mighty stone blocks, the working of which was far beyond the skills of the native Wampanoag, something that covered a great, but ruined, staircase that ran into the center of the Earth itself.  It was a bizarre legend, an impossible tale.  But it didn’t end with that great vestibule.

On December 21, 1639, during the darkest and longest night of the winter, three great ships sailed into the mouth of the Miskatonic River.  The people of Arkham awoke to the sound of chisels and hammers, of stone cutting and construction.  The men who labored on the hill were unknown to them, clad in strange raiment, faces hooded and cloaked.  But fear was greater than the people of Arkham’s curiosity.  For the four months that followed, the men continued their work, from the rising of the sun until it disappeared behind the western Berkshires.

Each night, the people of Arkham cowered behind their flimsy wooden doors, terrified of what lurked beyond.  But it was the Beltane Eve, the night of Walpurgis, that the old men of Arkham still speak of in whispered words and phrases.  They say the hills burned with an unnatural glow that night, that satanic psalms floated down to the town below, as creatures of darkness danced and gibbered in the moonlight.

When the sun rose on the first day of May 1640, the men were gone.  What they left behind was a great edifice of stone.

Three days passed.  When the workers did not reappear, it was determined a contingent of the town’s men should go up and investigate the structure that had been left behind.  It was led by Isaac Huntington.  It was no great distance from the edge of the town to the hill above, but the men advanced slowly.  When they reached the palace of granite, only Huntington was willing to enter.

For half an hour the men waited outside, many of them growing increasingly certain Huntington would never return.  But he did.  There was nothing inside, he reported.  Nothing but several great open spaces, and some steps leading down to a vault below.  In the vault were four murals.  These four murals represented the four great societies of antiquity – Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome.  They were exquisitely constructed, and some say at night, if the air is right, they each glow in the candlelight.  But the ancient staircase, the one that the people of Arkham had always feared, was nowhere to be seen.

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