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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I read this story long ago and it has stayed with me ever since. The so-called seasonal visitors turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who occupy a particular isolated country cottage annually. During this visit, in place of heading back to the city, they decide to prolong their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has remained by the water past the holiday. Regardless, the couple are determined to remain, and at that point things start to get increasingly weird. The man who delivers the kerosene refuses to sell to the couple. Not a single person is willing to supply groceries to the cabin, and as they try to travel to the community, the car fails to start. A tempest builds, the batteries of their radio die, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals crowded closely in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What might be they anticipating? What might the locals be aware of? Every time I revisit this author’s chilling and thought-provoking narrative, I’m reminded that the best horror comes from what’s left undisclosed.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this short story a pair go to a typical coastal village where bells ring constantly, a constant chiming that is irritating and unexplainable. The first truly frightening moment occurs during the evening, as they decide to take a walk and they fail to see the water. There’s sand, there is the odor of rotting fish and salt, surf is audible, but the sea appears spectral, or a different entity and more dreadful. It is truly deeply malevolent and every time I travel to the shore after dark I think about this tale that destroyed the beach in the evening in my view – in a good way.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, the husband is older – head back to the inn and find out the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of confinement, necro-orgy and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre chaos. It’s a chilling reflection on desire and decay, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the connection and violence and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but likely one of the best concise narratives available, and a personal favourite. I encountered it en español, in the debut release of these tales to be published in Argentina several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie by a pool overseas in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep through me. I also experienced the excitement of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a block. I didn’t know whether there existed a proper method to craft some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I understood that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the novel is a dark flight through the mind of a young serial killer, the protagonist, inspired by a notorious figure, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in Milwaukee during a specific period. Notoriously, the killer was fixated with creating a zombie sex slave who would stay him and attempted numerous grisly attempts to do so.

The deeds the story tells are terrible, but just as scary is its own psychological persuasiveness. The character’s dreadful, broken reality is plainly told in spare prose, identities hidden. The audience is immersed stuck in his mind, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The foreignness of his thinking is like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Starting this book is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the fear featured a vision during which I was trapped inside a container and, upon awakening, I realized that I had removed a part from the window, trying to get out. That building was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway filled with water, maggots fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a sizeable vermin climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

Once a companion gave me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the story of the house high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, longing at that time. It is a novel about a haunted loud, sentimental building and a female character who eats limestone from the cliffs. I loved the story deeply and came back again and again to its pages, consistently uncovering {something