#gothichorror — Public Fediverse posts

Finished reading Bram Stoker's #Dracula last night. Worth a read if just for the first few chapters in Dracula's castle. I found it sort of petered out after that, and the exciting conclusion I was hoping to find never really measured up to the first act.

I'd give it 3/5, but if you just want to read the first act as a short story I'd give that part 5/5.

I read the #ProjectGutenberg version with #KOReader on my #Kindle.

#Book #Horror #Vampire #GothicHorror #Classic #Literature

Finished reading Bram Stoker's #Dracula last night. Worth a read if just for the first few chapters in Dracula's castle. I found it sort of petered out after that, and the exciting conclusion I was hoping to find never really measured up to the first act.

I'd give it 3/5, but if you just want to read the first act as a short story I'd give that part 5/5.

I read the #ProjectGutenberg version with #KOReader on my #Kindle.

#Book #Horror #Vampire #GothicHorror #Classic #Literature

Finished reading Bram Stoker's #Dracula last night. Worth a read if just for the first few chapters in Dracula's castle. I found it sort of petered out after that, and the exciting conclusion I was hoping to find never really measured up to the first act.

I'd give it 3/5, but if you just want to read the first act as a short story I'd give that part 5/5.

I read the #ProjectGutenberg version with #KOReader on my #Kindle.

#Book #Horror #Vampire #GothicHorror #Classic #Literature

Finished reading Bram Stoker's #Dracula last night. Worth a read if just for the first few chapters in Dracula's castle. I found it sort of petered out after that, and the exciting conclusion I was hoping to find never really measured up to the first act.

I'd give it 3/5, but if you just want to read the first act as a short story I'd give that part 5/5.

I read the #ProjectGutenberg version with #KOReader on my #Kindle.

#Book #Horror #Vampire #GothicHorror #Classic #Literature

Finished reading Bram Stoker's #Dracula last night. Worth a read if just for the first few chapters in Dracula's castle. I found it sort of petered out after that, and the exciting conclusion I was hoping to find never really measured up to the first act.

I'd give it 3/5, but if you just want to read the first act as a short story I'd give that part 5/5.

I read the #ProjectGutenberg version with #KOReader on my #Kindle.

#Book #Horror #Vampire #GothicHorror #Classic #Literature

Black Star #1 Review: Titan Comics Delivers a Brutal Northern Gothic Debut https://comicbookaddicts.com/2026/07/black-star-1-review-titan-comics/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #BlackStar1 #TitanComics #ComicReview #NorthernGothic #GothicHorror

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

More about my next book, GODFESTATION, out August 11! Preorders mean so much. Thank you!
#horror #books #gothichorror #folkhorror

More about my next book, GODFESTATION, out August 11! Preorders mean so much. Thank you!
#horror #books #gothichorror #folkhorror

WERWULF Trailer: Willem Dafoe Teases Gothic Horror On June's Strawberry Full Moon [WATCH]

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://in.mashable.com/entertainment/111460/werwulf-trailer-willem-dafoe-teases-gothic-horror-on-junes-strawberry-full-moon-watch

On June 23, 1979, Dracula’s Daughter was screened on Son of Svengoolie. Here’s some original Gloria Holden art to mark the occasion!
.
#DraculasDaughter #Art #Svengoolie #GothicHorror #QueerFilm #Vampires #VampireArt #QueerCinema #FanArt

On June 23, 1993, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released on VHS by Columbia TriStar Home Video. Here’s a drawing of Winona Ryder!
.
#BramStokersDracula #Dracula #WinonaRyder #ScreamQueen #GothicHorror #HorrorArt #Art

On June 20, 1987, Madhouse was screened on The World Beyond. Here's some original Vincent Price art inspired by the horror classic!
.
#TheWorldBeyond #Madhouse #VincentPrice #GothicHorror #Grindhouse #HorrorArt #HorrorSky #FilmSky #Art

On June 20, 1987, Madhouse was screened on The World Beyond. Here's some original Vincent Price art inspired by the horror classic!
.
#TheWorldBeyond #Madhouse #VincentPrice #GothicHorror #Grindhouse #HorrorArt #HorrorSky #FilmSky #Art

A couple of months ago, I found, in a second-hand bookshop, a novel by someone I used to know. I didn't know he'd written it -- we haven't been in contact for many years. It's clearly self-published.

I started reading it yesterday. I wasn't expecting much, to be honest. He could definitely have done with a good copy-editor. But it turns out to be thoroughly gripping. A proper old-fashioned gothic horror story.

#Books #GothicHorror

A couple of months ago, I found, in a second-hand bookshop, a novel by someone I used to know. I didn't know he'd written it -- we haven't been in contact for many years. It's clearly self-published.

I started reading it yesterday. I wasn't expecting much, to be honest. He could definitely have done with a good copy-editor. But it turns out to be thoroughly gripping. A proper old-fashioned gothic horror story.

#Books #GothicHorror

Author Spotlight: Queer Gothic author Alice G. Brooks

Alice G. Brooks (they/she), formerly published under Alice Brooks, is a sapphic indie author writing LGBTQIA+ fiction, heavily focused on deep-seated trauma and pain. When they’re not writing, they enjoy hiking, videogames, rewatching the same shows over and over again, and reading queer books.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Links to All Books: relinks.me/AliceBrooks
“The Ink Eater” Preorder: mybook.to/theinkeater
Website: alicegbrooks.com

IG, Threads, and Tiktok: @alicebrookswrites

Book Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs:

“The Ink Eater” is a gothic romantic tragedy in which the world of an immortal young man who eats stories to survive is turned upside down when one of his stories escapes and unearths the most painful parts of his past, ultimately leading to question whether everything he has ever lived for is worth the pain; or whether choosing himself had ever been an option.

Your book The Ink Eater is a queer Gothic romantic tragedy, featuring an immortal who creates and eats his stories, and a shapeshifting ink creation who escapes containment, perfect for fans of Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters and readers of Gothic fiction craving asexual representation. Tell us about your influences for this book, and where the ideas came from?

This book was partially inspired by “Don’t let the forest in” by C.G. Drews, partially by a beta read of an unpublished book by Wren Blackburne, and most importantly by my own need to share my own spin of the “sentient house” trope, while displaying a nice, slightly hidden critique of generative AI and adding a form of asexual representation that I don’t see nearly enough. Writing this story has squeezed my heart and unveiled parts of my soul that even I didn’t know existed.

What rep will readers find in The Ink Eater, and can you tell us more about why is that rep important to you?

Firstly, there’s a gay pairing between the two main characters. More importantly, the protagonist of this novel, Baird Cardall, is asexual. With asexual representation, it’s common to see it displayed as being unable to fall in love, hating touch, or being portrayed as childish or cold.

Baird is none of those things. He’s asexual and homoromantic, he falls in love, he adores physical touch (once he trusts), and he’s anything but cold. I think that media needs more of that sort of representation. It’s partially based on my own experience and displays a part of the ace-spec that many people don’t even know exists. I also rarely see the split attraction model being represented anywhere, so I wanted to include this as well, seeing as I’ve made my own experience with that.

Was it a conscious choice to write a romantic tragedy, or did the plot bend that way during the writing process?

A conscious choice. I’d gone in with the intention to write based on the story structure of Freytag’s Pyramid, which builds from exposition to the climax and the falling action; but it doesn’t end there. It ends with a catastrophe. I try to be very upfront about the fact that, yes, this book is tragic. It is not a romance, even though it contains one. It is not a happy story. I always knew exactly how Baird’s story was going to have to unravel, and I would argue that there’s a lot of potential for discussion and interpretation about the ending.

Tell us about your main characters, Baird and Hemming. How did you go about developing them, and where did the seeds of inspiration for these characters come from?

Baird existed first. I knew I wanted someone who eats stories and who survives off them, as long as they carry meaning and heart.

Hemming, originally, was intended to be a sort of paranormal investigator or something like that. I scrapped the idea when I came up with a story that escaped from the ink.

I’m a pantser, which means my stories are largely not outlined before writing them, so I discover a lot about my characters as I go. They developed on their own; I like to say that I merely write protocol for what they get up to.

Baird just naturally grew to be someone who loves nature, who talks to the animals and the plants, and who has a giant heart for everything around him but himself. He’s terrified of leaving the sentient manor he’s bound to, and hasn’t done so in the past 241 years. Why? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Hemming, on the other hand, is a bit of a snarky diva, but he cares deeply. He came to life through the story; he isn’t the story itself, but a being made of magic and ink who has been with Baird for a long time but didn’t develop a conscience until he took the name Baird created for a shapeshifter in his story and left the paper to be Baird’s friend. That’s his sole mission: make Baird happy. But that doesn’t mean he’s one-dimensional or lackluster, in fact, I think he’s one of my most complex characters. He’s the one who opens Baird’s eyes to the trauma he went through without truly realizing it, and without him, the whole story would’ve never happened.

What drew you to make the manor the main antagonist, and how did its role and character develop as you went through the drafting process?

I just really like sentient houses. At first, I didn’t have the manor in mind as an antagonist. It was just sort of a plot device, a secondary background character that made Baird’s existence more interesting and explained his curse. But then, as I was writing, its voice became clearer to me. And it does, in fact, have a voice. It talks to Baird; he refers to the voice as “his insides” throughout the stories, a voice that is “physical but also not”. It can control him to an extent, he’s the only one who can hear it, and he has a sort of codependent bond to the manor.

As I went through my latest editing rounds, the manor’s voice became darker and more manipulative, demanding in its wants and needs, and adding lore to Baird’s background. I’m very excited to see what people will think of Cardall Manor.

Was the sentient manor based on/inspired by any real/fictional buildings, and if so, what were they? If not, how did you go about designing it in your head as the setting for the book?

It wasn’t. The only room I had in mind was the story room, where Baird consumes his tales. I’d been picturing a gothic manor, but it can really be whatever you want it to be. The manor was built “so long ago” that nobody remembers when exactly it was created. But it changes and evolves with time, providing warmth in winter and coolness in summer. It has no plumbing but can draw a warm bath if one asks nicely enough.

The rooms of the manor were added as I was writing. The piano room and Lilith’s old bedroom were added later on, the foyer has been there since almost the start, and I had no precise image in head for the manor. Then, I had a friend draw it, and now that’s what it looks like in my head. There’s some art for it on my Instagram page, if anybody would like to see that.

What is your favourite piece of reader feedback or reviews for this series so far?

I’ve not yet had any reviews at this point, but my wonderful editor Sebbie [they/she/he] of Silver Press Edits has brought up so many interesting pieces of feedback and given me comparisons to different mythologies and tales that my story draws similarities to. It made me see the story in a whole new light.

Like This? Try These:

Author Spotlight: Queer Gothic author Alice G. Brooks

Alice G. Brooks (they/she), formerly published under Alice Brooks, is a sapphic indie author writing LGBTQIA+ fiction, heavily focused on deep-seated trauma and pain. When they’re not writing, they enjoy hiking, videogames, rewatching the same shows over and over again, and reading queer books.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Links to All Books: relinks.me/AliceBrooks
“The Ink Eater” Preorder: mybook.to/theinkeater
Website: alicegbrooks.com

IG, Threads, and Tiktok: @alicebrookswrites

Book Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs:

“The Ink Eater” is a gothic romantic tragedy in which the world of an immortal young man who eats stories to survive is turned upside down when one of his stories escapes and unearths the most painful parts of his past, ultimately leading to question whether everything he has ever lived for is worth the pain; or whether choosing himself had ever been an option.

Your book The Ink Eater is a queer Gothic romantic tragedy, featuring an immortal who creates and eats his stories, and a shapeshifting ink creation who escapes containment, perfect for fans of Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters and readers of Gothic fiction craving asexual representation. Tell us about your influences for this book, and where the ideas came from?

This book was partially inspired by “Don’t let the forest in” by C.G. Drews, partially by a beta read of an unpublished book by Wren Blackburne, and most importantly by my own need to share my own spin of the “sentient house” trope, while displaying a nice, slightly hidden critique of generative AI and adding a form of asexual representation that I don’t see nearly enough. Writing this story has squeezed my heart and unveiled parts of my soul that even I didn’t know existed.

What rep will readers find in The Ink Eater, and can you tell us more about why is that rep important to you?

Firstly, there’s a gay pairing between the two main characters. More importantly, the protagonist of this novel, Baird Cardall, is asexual. With asexual representation, it’s common to see it displayed as being unable to fall in love, hating touch, or being portrayed as childish or cold.

Baird is none of those things. He’s asexual and homoromantic, he falls in love, he adores physical touch (once he trusts), and he’s anything but cold. I think that media needs more of that sort of representation. It’s partially based on my own experience and displays a part of the ace-spec that many people don’t even know exists. I also rarely see the split attraction model being represented anywhere, so I wanted to include this as well, seeing as I’ve made my own experience with that.

Was it a conscious choice to write a romantic tragedy, or did the plot bend that way during the writing process?

A conscious choice. I’d gone in with the intention to write based on the story structure of Freytag’s Pyramid, which builds from exposition to the climax and the falling action; but it doesn’t end there. It ends with a catastrophe. I try to be very upfront about the fact that, yes, this book is tragic. It is not a romance, even though it contains one. It is not a happy story. I always knew exactly how Baird’s story was going to have to unravel, and I would argue that there’s a lot of potential for discussion and interpretation about the ending.

Tell us about your main characters, Baird and Hemming. How did you go about developing them, and where did the seeds of inspiration for these characters come from?

Baird existed first. I knew I wanted someone who eats stories and who survives off them, as long as they carry meaning and heart.

Hemming, originally, was intended to be a sort of paranormal investigator or something like that. I scrapped the idea when I came up with a story that escaped from the ink.

I’m a pantser, which means my stories are largely not outlined before writing them, so I discover a lot about my characters as I go. They developed on their own; I like to say that I merely write protocol for what they get up to.

Baird just naturally grew to be someone who loves nature, who talks to the animals and the plants, and who has a giant heart for everything around him but himself. He’s terrified of leaving the sentient manor he’s bound to, and hasn’t done so in the past 241 years. Why? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Hemming, on the other hand, is a bit of a snarky diva, but he cares deeply. He came to life through the story; he isn’t the story itself, but a being made of magic and ink who has been with Baird for a long time but didn’t develop a conscience until he took the name Baird created for a shapeshifter in his story and left the paper to be Baird’s friend. That’s his sole mission: make Baird happy. But that doesn’t mean he’s one-dimensional or lackluster, in fact, I think he’s one of my most complex characters. He’s the one who opens Baird’s eyes to the trauma he went through without truly realizing it, and without him, the whole story would’ve never happened.

What drew you to make the manor the main antagonist, and how did its role and character develop as you went through the drafting process?

I just really like sentient houses. At first, I didn’t have the manor in mind as an antagonist. It was just sort of a plot device, a secondary background character that made Baird’s existence more interesting and explained his curse. But then, as I was writing, its voice became clearer to me. And it does, in fact, have a voice. It talks to Baird; he refers to the voice as “his insides” throughout the stories, a voice that is “physical but also not”. It can control him to an extent, he’s the only one who can hear it, and he has a sort of codependent bond to the manor.

As I went through my latest editing rounds, the manor’s voice became darker and more manipulative, demanding in its wants and needs, and adding lore to Baird’s background. I’m very excited to see what people will think of Cardall Manor.

Was the sentient manor based on/inspired by any real/fictional buildings, and if so, what were they? If not, how did you go about designing it in your head as the setting for the book?

It wasn’t. The only room I had in mind was the story room, where Baird consumes his tales. I’d been picturing a gothic manor, but it can really be whatever you want it to be. The manor was built “so long ago” that nobody remembers when exactly it was created. But it changes and evolves with time, providing warmth in winter and coolness in summer. It has no plumbing but can draw a warm bath if one asks nicely enough.

The rooms of the manor were added as I was writing. The piano room and Lilith’s old bedroom were added later on, the foyer has been there since almost the start, and I had no precise image in head for the manor. Then, I had a friend draw it, and now that’s what it looks like in my head. There’s some art for it on my Instagram page, if anybody would like to see that.

What is your favourite piece of reader feedback or reviews for this series so far?

I’ve not yet had any reviews at this point, but my wonderful editor Sebbie [they/she/he] of Silver Press Edits has brought up so many interesting pieces of feedback and given me comparisons to different mythologies and tales that my story draws similarities to. It made me see the story in a whole new light.

Like This? Try These:

Check out my latest post on Substack, where you can subscribe to get updates sent directly to your email. This drop talks a bit about how my works are interconnected, and lays out a bit of the plans for my volumes of Shadowed Memories: Dark Shadow, which I'm currently working on outlining.

https://open.substack.com/pub/evanderlfragoso/p/the-story-timeline?r=5d3dar&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Don’t forget to breath, enjoy what you can, and bask Meraki’s cosmic waves of wonder and creativity,
~E.L.F.

Explore books & socials: ELFlinks.Weebly.com
Subscribe: EvanderLFragoso.Substack.com

#WritersBlog #Writer #Author #Substack #SubstackBlog #SelfPublished #UrbanFantasy #GothicHorror #VampireHunterD

Check out my latest post on Substack, where you can subscribe to get updates sent directly to your email. This drop talks a bit about how my works are interconnected, and lays out a bit of the plans for my volumes of Shadowed Memories: Dark Shadow, which I'm currently working on outlining.

https://open.substack.com/pub/evanderlfragoso/p/the-story-timeline?r=5d3dar&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Don’t forget to breath, enjoy what you can, and bask Meraki’s cosmic waves of wonder and creativity,
~E.L.F.

Explore books & socials: ELFlinks.Weebly.com
Subscribe: EvanderLFragoso.Substack.com

#WritersBlog #Writer #Author #Substack #SubstackBlog #SelfPublished #UrbanFantasy #GothicHorror #VampireHunterD

A friend recommended his favorite story to listen to (he does audiobooks), so I've been reading it, and the story itself is interesting so far, but the writing is killing me. It's a serialized story on Webnovel where the author released about two chapters a day for four years, with the story having a big fanbase. Since then, the author has gone on to work on other things, but my gosh is it depressing to read. The story isn't bad, or the subject matter depressing, but I'm 49 chapters in and the writing is still so very amateurish. I can acknowledge that it's great to be able to write this continuous story, releasing so much on a daily basis, but there's ridiculously repetitious paragraphs, and there are crazy little things like introducing someone holding a "rapier sword." A rapier is a type of sword!
Anyway, the point is, I understand that we live in an on-demand world where everything has to be quick and punchy, and that's how people are able to write things like this and get away with it (not to mention the horrendous declining literacy rates...) but that doesn't mean I have to settle.
I'm sticking with my plan, plotting out the volumes for my continuation to Shadowed Memories. I may be weighing my options on putting out rough drafts of chapters out there, with plans to publish them on my Substack for paid subscribers on top of other behind-the-scenes content while I think about going back to Inkitt, but I don't plan on compromising my worlds.
I’ll try and use some of this anguish and disdain for more chapter plotting.
Don’t forget to breath, enjoy what you can, and bask Meraki’s cosmic waves of wonder and creativity,
~E.L.F.

Explore books & socials: ELFlinks.Weebly.com
Subscribe: EvanderLFragoso.Substack.com

#WritersBlog #Writer #Author #Substack #SubstackBlog #SelfPublished #UrbanFantasy #GothicHorror #VampireHunterD

Creative Writing: … and Stormy Night

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/creative-writing-and-stormy-night/

Creative Writing: … and Stormy Night

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/creative-writing-and-stormy-night/

Creative Writing: … and Stormy Night

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/creative-writing-and-stormy-night/

Creative Writing: … and Stormy Night

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/creative-writing-and-stormy-night/

Creative Writing: … and Stormy Night

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/creative-writing-and-stormy-night/

Creative Writing: The Darkened…

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/creative-writing-the-darkened/

Creative Writing: The Darkened…

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/creative-writing-the-darkened/

Creative Writing: The Darkened…

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/creative-writing-the-darkened/

Creative Writing: The Darkened…

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/creative-writing-the-darkened/

Creative Writing: The Darkened…

https://ceriashwardauthor.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/creative-writing-the-darkened/

Spirit of the Shadows #5 Review: Nick Cagnetti’s Gothic Horror Finale https://comicbookaddicts.com/2026/05/spirit-of-the-shadows-5-oni-press-review/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #SpiritOfTheShadows #GothicHorror #ComicBookReview #NickCagnetti #OniPress

The Bride! and The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster dilute the Gothic tradition through maximalist pastiche, superficial empowerment rhetoric, and loopholes that evade the finality of death itself.
#Frankenstein #MaryShelley #TheBride #TheAngryBlackGirlAndHerMonster #GothicHorror #FilmCriticism #Horror #Cinema #ScienceFiction #MovieReview
https://pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2026/05/15/stitched-together-and-falling-apart-the-high-concept-failure-of-modern-frankenstein-reimaginings/

Sugar Beets

They planted sugar beets over the dead.

This was the first thing the old woman told me, and she said it without looking at me, as if the sentence itself were a window she dared not face.

We were standing at the edge of the field beyond Demmin, where the earth sank and rose in shallow, uneven swells. It was late autumn. The beet leaves lay dark and rubbery against the soil, wide as tongues, veined like the hands of the very old. Beyond them the river moved with the dull patience of something that had learned not to answer questions.

“You are writing a history?” she asked.

“A story,” I said.

“That is worse.”

Her name was Frau Ilse Kröger, though she had been a child when the town burned and the people went down to the water. Her coat was buttoned to the throat. Her hair, white and thin, had been pinned so tightly that her face seemed pulled backward by memory.

“You must not make ghosts of them,” she said.

“I thought perhaps they already were.”

At that she turned to me. Her eyes were pale, not weak, but faded by long endurance.

“No,” she said. “Ghosts are the dead who cannot leave. These were the living who were not allowed to remain.”

The wind moved through the beet leaves. They rustled low to the ground, not like plants, but like a crowd whispering with its face in the dirt.

I had come to Demmin because of a sentence in an old magazine, a line in a later book, a footnote beneath a national silence. Some said seven hundred. Some said a thousand. Some said more. The numbers rose and fell like bodies seen through river water. There had been war, terror, propaganda, vengeance, collapse. There had been flames in the town and soldiers in the streets and stories told so often in fear that fear itself became a door. Mothers carried children to the river. Men tied themselves to stones. Families vanished into reeds. The Peene, the Tollense, the Trebel—all waters became witnesses.

And afterward, when the new order came, the dead were inconvenient.

So they let grass grow high.

Then they plowed.

Then they planted sugar beets.

There is a peculiar obscenity in sweetness drawn from such soil.

I asked Frau Kröger if she remembered the field.

“I remember my mother’s hand,” she said. “I remember the smoke. I remember how the sky looked too low, as though God had leaned down to see and then could not bear to look any longer.”

We walked along the furrows. The earth clung to our boots in black-red lumps. Here and there the beets pushed up from the ground, pale shoulders emerging from darkness. They resembled skulls that had changed their minds and decided to become vegetables.

“Did anyone speak of it later?” I asked.

“Not aloud.”

“But in homes?”

She stopped.

“In homes most of all we did not speak.”

The field seemed to hear this and approve.

That night I stayed in a small room above an inn where the wallpaper peeled in long strips like shed skin. The radiator hissed. The window looked toward the rivers, though I could not see them, only a blackness where the land dropped away.

Near midnight, I woke to the smell of wet soil.

At first I thought I had dreamed it. But the smell thickened—earth, roots, river mud, and beneath it a faint sweetness, cloying and raw, like sugar spilled in a cellar.

Then came the sound.

Scraping.

Not at the door. Not at the window.

Under the floor.

I sat up.

The boards beneath the bed gave a soft, deliberate creak, though I had not moved. Then another. Then many small sounds together: scratching, pressing, shifting. Like roots growing upward. Like fingernails beneath wood.

I lit the lamp.

Nothing.

The room was ordinary again, ordinary in the way a corpse can be ordinary once the scream has left it.

I did not sleep. Toward dawn I looked from the window and saw, in the paling gray, a line of figures walking beyond the last houses toward the fields. They were indistinct, blurred by mist, and moved slowly, not like soldiers, not like mourners, but like people following instructions they no longer understood.

At breakfast, I asked the innkeeper whether there was a memorial nearby.

He wiped the counter though it was already clean.

“There is a stone,” he said.

“A stone?”

“For those who need stones.”

“And for those who need truth?”

He looked at me then with a kind of pity.

“Truth?” he said. “Truth is heavy. People say they want it, but mostly they want a stone small enough to walk past.”

Later I returned to the field alone.

The beets had been harvested in part. Great heaps stood near the road, pale and earthen, piled like bones awaiting judgment. A truck had left deep tracks in the mud. Crows hopped among the clods.

Near the center of the field I found a place where nothing grew.

It was not large. A rough oval of bare ground. The soil there was darker than the rest and soft despite the cold. I knelt and pressed my fingers into it. Water welled up at once.

Not rainwater.

River water.

It rose around my hand, cold and brown, though the rivers lay some distance away. I pulled back, startled. The little hollow filled silently, reflecting the sky. In its surface I saw, not my own face, but the white blur of beet roots hanging downward, though there were no plants above it.

Then a voice behind me said, “Do not dig.”

Frau Kröger stood at the edge of the furrow.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were thinking of it.”

That was true.

She came closer, slowly, leaning on her cane. “There were men who dug after the war. Men who made lists. Men who counted what could be counted and buried what could not. But later the counting became dangerous.”

“Because it accused someone?”

“Because it accused everyone.”

The wind pressed her coat flat against her body.

“The dead asked too many questions,” she said. “Why did you believe the lies? Why did you fear more than you loved? Why did you stay silent? Why did you come too late? Why did you plant over us?”

A crow called from the beet heap.

“And now?” I asked.

“Now they ask nothing. That is worse.”

From the hollow in the ground came a faint sound like breathing.

Frau Kröger heard it too. Her face tightened.

“When I was a girl,” she said, “we stole beets from this field. Children are always hungry after wars. My brother carried one home under his coat. My mother slapped him when she saw where it came from. Not because he stole. Because he brought it into the house.”

“What happened?”

“She cooked it.”

I stared at her.

“What else could she do? We were hungry.”

Her mouth trembled. Not with tears, but with a terrible, bitter smile.

“It was sweet,” she said. “That was the worst of it.”

The hollow had widened.

Water slipped along the furrows now, thin shining lines threading through the field. The beet leaves stirred though the wind had fallen. From beneath the soil came a low murmur, not words, but the sound of many people speaking with mouths full of earth.

Frau Kröger gripped my arm.

“You wanted your story,” she whispered. “Here it is. This town did not bury the dead. It buried the question of why the living could be driven to the water. It buried fear. It buried shame. It buried the terror of armies and the poison of the Reich and the helplessness of mothers and the guilt of neighbors and the convenience of silence. Then it planted sugar over all of it and called the sweetness harvest.”

The ground shuddered.

One beet near my boot loosened itself. Its root twisted upward, slick with mud. For one instant it looked horribly like a hand.

Then another rose.

Then another.

All across the field the sugar beets began to lift from the earth, not quickly, not violently, but with the slow resolve of the dead being remembered. Soil broke. Leaves trembled. Pale roots emerged, round and blunt, each carrying clots of black mud. The heaps by the road shifted and rolled, collapsing outward.

The air filled with sweetness.

Too much sweetness.

The kind that coats the throat and makes breathing difficult.

From the direction of the river came bells. Not church bells. Smaller. Duller. As if stones were striking beneath water.

Frau Kröger began to pray, but not in words I knew. Perhaps no language survived intact in her after that year. Perhaps prayer, after such things, becomes only the soul refusing to be silent.

The water in the furrows deepened. It ran around our boots. The field had become a map of rivers, every row a tributary, every hollow a mouth.

Then I saw them.

Not ghosts exactly.

Figures in the mist, standing among the beets. Women in dark coats. Children with pale faces. Old men bent beneath invisible burdens. They did not accuse. They did not plead. They only stood where the earth had held them, gazing toward the town that had gone on living.

Their silence was unbearable.

I wanted them to speak. I wanted a curse, a revelation, a sentence to carve onto stone. But they gave none.

That was their judgment.

They had been made into numbers, then rumors, then taboo, then crops. They had been reduced to a place one passed without lowering one’s voice. Now they returned not to frighten the living, but to make evasion impossible.

Frau Kröger stepped forward into the water.

“I remember,” she said.

The figures did not move.

“I remember,” she said again, louder.

The mist thickened around her.

“I remember my mother’s hand. I remember smoke. I remember the river. I remember the field. I remember that we ate what grew here. I remember that we did not speak. I remember.”

At that, the sweetness in the air broke.

Not vanished. Broke.

Like a fever.

Like a spell.

The beet roots sank back into the soil. The water withdrew into the furrows. The figures faded, though their absence remained visible, like the shape left on a wall after a picture is removed.

Frau Kröger stood very still.

When I helped her back to the road, she was weeping soundlessly.

“Will you write it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then do not make it beautiful.”

I looked across the field. Dawn had begun to rise, gray and reluctant. The town lay beyond us, roofs dark, windows catching the first weak light. Somewhere a church bell rang the hour. Somewhere bread was being sliced. Somewhere children were waking without knowing what slept beneath the ground that fed them.

“I don’t know how to write such a thing without beauty,” I said.

She nodded, as if this were the oldest failure of language.

“Then make the beauty ashamed of itself.”

Years later, when I think of Demmin, I do not first think of death.

I think of sugar.

White crystals in a bowl. Sweetness stirred into coffee. Cakes dusted for weddings. Beet fields under a low northern sky. The ordinary miracle by which earth becomes food.

And I think of what the earth remembers when we do not.

For every country has its sugar beet field.

Every people has some place where the dead were covered, where the official mouth closed, where the plow passed over grief and called it necessity. Every age plants something over its horror and prays the harvest will be useful.

But beneath the sweetness, the roots know.

Beneath the furrows, the waters wait.

And sometimes, when the wind lies down and the mist comes low over Demmin, the field begins to whisper—not to the dead, who already know, but to the living, who still pretend they do not:

Remember us before we rise.

Heres a health to the company....

Costume by @Twinsofdestruction EXCELSIOR! :) #victorianfashion #victorianstyle #victoriangoth #victoriangothic #victoriangothicstyle #gothicfashion #gothic #gothicstyle #outfit #outfitinspiration #outfitbreakdown #nosferatu #dracula #frankenstein #1830s #gothichorror #twinsofdestruction

Heres a health to the company....

Costume by @Twinsofdestruction EXCELSIOR! :) #victorianfashion #victorianstyle #victoriangoth #victoriangothic #victoriangothicstyle #gothicfashion #gothic #gothicstyle #outfit #outfitinspiration #outfitbreakdown #nosferatu #dracula #frankenstein #1830s #gothichorror #twinsofdestruction

On April 24, 1931, the Spanish version of Dracula debuted in New York City. Here's some new fan art! . #Dracula #Vampires #GothicHorror #Art #UniversalMonsters

🖤 Το Mexican Gothic της Silvia Moreno-Garcia είναι μια σύγχρονη γοτθική ιστορία τρόμου με στοιχειωμένο αρχοντικό, οικογενειακά μυστικά και έντονη ατμόσφαιρα. Από @ekdoseisklidarithmos.

Δες την κριτική του βιβλίου στο horrormovies.gr για περισσότερα. 📚

#MexicanGothic #BookReview #GothicHorror #HorrorBooks #HorrorMoviesGR

April 23, 2026 at 04:00PM

https://instagr.am/p/DXeZ8vfj128/

https://scontent-iad6-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t39.30808-6/679643417_1545773117549434_7610700395670337082_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_e35_tt6&_nc_cat=107&ccb=7-5&_nc_sid=18de74&efg=eyJlZmdfdGFnIjoiQ0FST1VTRUxfSVRFTS5iZXN0X2ltYWdlX3VybGdlbi5DMyJ9&_nc_ohc=4UXd12QOh60Q7kNvwFdN7eZ&_nc_oc=AdqFdmtOAwyo9R2NhoWONDWUHt_QA3qv8xb9K583tgB8WOA4wCjFu5agYUaPC23BEe0&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad6-1.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=FVMgp-EdbOYNztNu2pye-w&_nc_tpa=Q5bMBQHlQ13k8C_X4Kb44nSOxpJ12Qlth4meupGPK0GnUaGT0PkXURTzQsyVDzb9VWNfBRtgAZnMNrmN&oh=00_Af2YrXT5y7JtvtZNRSgHGOu3xghmhmWqZcal0NdcBh5krg&oe=69F00AA6

🖤 Το Mexican Gothic της Silvia Moreno-Garcia είναι μια σύγχρονη γοτθική ιστορία τρόμου με στοιχειωμένο αρχοντικό, οικογενειακά μυστικά και έντονη ατμόσφαιρα. Από @ekdoseisklidarithmos.

Δες την κριτική του βιβλίου στο horrormovies.gr για περισσότερα. 📚

#MexicanGothic #BookReview #GothicHorror #HorrorBooks #HorrorMoviesGR

April 23, 2026 at 04:00PM

https://instagr.am/p/DXeZ8vfj128/

https://scontent-iad6-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t39.30808-6/679643417_1545773117549434_7610700395670337082_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_e35_tt6&_nc_cat=107&ccb=7-5&_nc_sid=18de74&efg=eyJlZmdfdGFnIjoiQ0FST1VTRUxfSVRFTS5iZXN0X2ltYWdlX3VybGdlbi5DMyJ9&_nc_ohc=4UXd12QOh60Q7kNvwFdN7eZ&_nc_oc=AdqFdmtOAwyo9R2NhoWONDWUHt_QA3qv8xb9K583tgB8WOA4wCjFu5agYUaPC23BEe0&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad6-1.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=FVMgp-EdbOYNztNu2pye-w&_nc_tpa=Q5bMBQHlQ13k8C_X4Kb44nSOxpJ12Qlth4meupGPK0GnUaGT0PkXURTzQsyVDzb9VWNfBRtgAZnMNrmN&oh=00_Af2YrXT5y7JtvtZNRSgHGOu3xghmhmWqZcal0NdcBh5krg&oe=69F00AA6

Black Star #1: Kristin Kreuk’s Northern Gothic Horror Debut https://comicbookaddicts.com/2026/04/kristin-kreuk-black-star-1-titan-comics-debut/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #BlackStar #KristinKreuk #GothicHorror #ComicBooks #Noir

Well… this is frustrating.

I’ve been publishing my writing through Amazon since around 2017/2018, and last year I decided to expand to other platforms. Draft2Digital seemed like a great, simple way to distribute my books more widely without a lot of extra hassle.

AI has made the landscape a lot messier for actual human creators. There’s been a surge of AI-generated books flooding the market, and now it looks like some companies are responding by introducing fees for independent authors just to get their work out there.

I’ll need to rethink how I’m distributing my writing, because this model doesn’t really work for me right now. Paying an annual fee if I don’t sell enough copies just doesn’t sit right, especially when books take up so little digital space.

While I figure out my next steps and continue working on future projects, feel free to check out and share my work. If you're new to my writing, I'm a genre blender leaning into a dark gothic feel while embracing urban fantasy, science fiction, and post-apocalyptic themes. Give these interesting nightmares a home. You can grab a book at:

ElfLinks.Weebly.com

If you’re not sure where to start, Making Contact is a shorter read and a great entry point involving an important recurring character in my works, while Shadowed Memories leads into the story I’m currently outlining.

#indiewriter #urbanfantasybooks #gothichorror #Draft2Digital #D2D #amazonbooks #author #authorlife #authorblog

Well… this is frustrating.

I’ve been publishing my writing through Amazon since around 2017/2018, and last year I decided to expand to other platforms. Draft2Digital seemed like a great, simple way to distribute my books more widely without a lot of extra hassle.

AI has made the landscape a lot messier for actual human creators. There’s been a surge of AI-generated books flooding the market, and now it looks like some companies are responding by introducing fees for independent authors just to get their work out there.

I’ll need to rethink how I’m distributing my writing, because this model doesn’t really work for me right now. Paying an annual fee if I don’t sell enough copies just doesn’t sit right, especially when books take up so little digital space.

While I figure out my next steps and continue working on future projects, feel free to check out and share my work. If you're new to my writing, I'm a genre blender leaning into a dark gothic feel while embracing urban fantasy, science fiction, and post-apocalyptic themes. Give these interesting nightmares a home. You can grab a book at:

ElfLinks.Weebly.com

If you’re not sure where to start, Making Contact is a shorter read and a great entry point involving an important recurring character in my works, while Shadowed Memories leads into the story I’m currently outlining.

#indiewriter #urbanfantasybooks #gothichorror #Draft2Digital #D2D #amazonbooks #author #authorlife #authorblog

Well… this is frustrating.

I’ve been publishing my writing through Amazon since around 2017/2018, and last year I decided to expand to other platforms. Draft2Digital seemed like a great, simple way to distribute my books more widely without a lot of extra hassle.

AI has made the landscape a lot messier for actual human creators. There’s been a surge of AI-generated books flooding the market, and now it looks like some companies are responding by introducing fees for independent authors just to get their work out there.

I’ll need to rethink how I’m distributing my writing, because this model doesn’t really work for me right now. Paying an annual fee if I don’t sell enough copies just doesn’t sit right, especially when books take up so little digital space.

While I figure out my next steps and continue working on future projects, feel free to check out and share my work. If you're new to my writing, I'm a genre blender leaning into a dark gothic feel while embracing urban fantasy, science fiction, and post-apocalyptic themes. Give these interesting nightmares a home. You can grab a book at:

ElfLinks.Weebly.com

If you’re not sure where to start, Making Contact is a shorter read and a great entry point involving an important recurring character in my works, while Shadowed Memories leads into the story I’m currently outlining.

#indiewriter #urbanfantasybooks #gothichorror #Draft2Digital #D2D #amazonbooks #author #authorlife #authorblog

Well… this is frustrating.

I’ve been publishing my writing through Amazon since around 2017/2018, and last year I decided to expand to other platforms. Draft2Digital seemed like a great, simple way to distribute my books more widely without a lot of extra hassle.

AI has made the landscape a lot messier for actual human creators. There’s been a surge of AI-generated books flooding the market, and now it looks like some companies are responding by introducing fees for independent authors just to get their work out there.

I’ll need to rethink how I’m distributing my writing, because this model doesn’t really work for me right now. Paying an annual fee if I don’t sell enough copies just doesn’t sit right, especially when books take up so little digital space.

While I figure out my next steps and continue working on future projects, feel free to check out and share my work. If you're new to my writing, I'm a genre blender leaning into a dark gothic feel while embracing urban fantasy, science fiction, and post-apocalyptic themes. Give these interesting nightmares a home. You can grab a book at:

ElfLinks.Weebly.com

If you’re not sure where to start, Making Contact is a shorter read and a great entry point involving an important recurring character in my works, while Shadowed Memories leads into the story I’m currently outlining.

#indiewriter #urbanfantasybooks #gothichorror #Draft2Digital #D2D #amazonbooks #author #authorlife #authorblog

51RA

They stamped his body in sections beneath white factory lamps.

The men on the line did not know his name, though some of them felt it move in the machines before ever they heard it. They knew only that the air in Bay 4 had changed over the past few months. It had become charged in some way difficult to explain without sounding foolish. Small things accumulated. The press would shudder once before starting, as if waking from unpleasant dreams. Finished receivers, lined in neat rows, sometimes gave off a smell like struck flint though no spark had touched them. More than one worker complained of hearing what sounded like breathing through ear protection, a slow, deliberate inhalation and release beneath the pounding of stampers and the whine of torque drivers. Most laughed it off. Factories had their noises, their quirks, their little ghost stories. Men who spent ten hours a day amidst repetitive thunder began to hear all sorts of things.

But Owen Kreel had worked the line for seventeen years, and he knew the difference between a bad bearing, a loose panel, and something for which there was no mechanical name.

The first time he truly noticed it, a lower receiver had come down the conveyor and stopped directly before him, though the belt was still moving and the others behind it continued their slow approach. That should not have been possible. Nothing stopped without jamming the line. Yet there it sat, black and unfinished, rocking ever so slightly as though it had arrived under its own intention. Owen stared at the serial engraving panel, waiting for the code to blink into the screen above his station.

Instead, for the briefest instant, he thought he saw letters already there.

S I R A

Then the belt jerked. The receiver slid on. The monitor filled with ordinary production data. Owen said nothing.

That night, he dreamed of a great hall filled with rifles standing upright like candles. Not piled, not racked, but planted muzzle-up in a black floor that shone like church stone after rain. Between them walked a tall figure in a long coat, his hands clasped behind his back, moving with the calm assurance of a bishop inspecting graves. Owen never saw his face clearly. Only the cheekbones, the severe brow, the mouth that seemed always on the edge of pronouncing sentence. The figure paused before one rifle and laid two fingers against the barrel almost lovingly. At once, all the others turned—not physically, for they had no heads to turn, but inwardly, spiritually—toward that touch, as brambles turn to light. Owen woke with his heart hammering so violently he thought for a moment that someone had been pounding on his chest from the inside.

By dawn, he had persuaded himself it was nothing.

That was before the first shooting of autumn.

The television over the breakroom refrigerator showed the same images all afternoon: parking lot tape fluttering in a cold wind, ambulances, a woman collapsed against the hood of a cruiser, children being led in a line with their hands on each other’s shoulders. The model name of the rifle was spoken and respoken by anchors with grave expressions and professionally moderated sorrow. Owen stood among the others holding a paper cup of coffee gone lukewarm in his hand. Nobody said much. A few cursed the killer. A few muttered about mental illness. One man began, reflexively, to complain about how the media would twist it, but even he could not summon conviction. On the screen the camera cut to a close-up of investigators carrying evidence bags. One bag contained part of a shattered black receiver.

Owen spilled his coffee.

There, just for a second, under the harsh bloom of the news camera, visible through blood smears and fingerprint powder, was a marking like a scratch or flaw in the metal. A tiny hooked incision near the serial block. Owen had seen it before. Three days earlier, at his own station, on a piece he had assumed defective and sent back down the line.

He told himself it could not be the same one.

But after that he began to see the mark everywhere.

Not on every unit. That would have been simple. This was worse. It appeared only on certain pieces, and never exactly the same way twice, yet always with the unmistakable coherence of a signature. Sometimes it looked like a hooked thorn. Sometimes like a stylized numeral. Sometimes like the vertical of an I crossed by accident. Once, after a twelve-hour shift, he found himself tracing it on a fogged bathroom mirror before realizing his finger had moved without instruction from his mind.

His wife, Mara, asked him twice that week if something was wrong. Owen told her he was tired. It was the season, he said. Mandatory overtime. Election noise. The world being what it was. He did not tell her about the dreams, nor that he had begun waking with words in his mouth that felt old and metallic, as though he had been sleeping with bullets under his tongue. He did not tell her that at work, when the riveters screamed and the line thundered and all the men bent in rhythm to the making, there were moments he felt less like a laborer than a priest attending some dreadful liturgy.

Soon he could no longer ignore the sense that the rifles were not being manufactured.

They were being prepared.

It was around this time that the old man came into the gun shop.

The shop stood forty miles from the plant, out past a line of cornfields already gone brown and a stand of bare trees black against the lowering sky. Owen had gone there before, though never with any real pleasure. He told Mara he was looking for parts for a deer rifle inherited from his father, which was not entirely false. In truth he had gone because he had started to feel that if there was an answer anywhere, it might lie not in the factory but in the places where the finished bodies came to rest before entering the hands of their owners. If there was a haunting, perhaps it deepened at the point of choosing.

The bell over the door gave a dull, funereal clatter as he entered. The shop smelled of old wood, solvent, rubber mats, and a faint undernote of mildew. Rifles lined the walls in patient ranks. Glass cases held pistols like relics. A television in the corner played a hunting show with the sound turned off. Behind the counter stood a young clerk with a trimmed beard and an eagerness in his face that made him look almost childlike. Near the back, seated beside a rack of black semi-automatics, was an old man in a dark coat with a cane laid across his knees.

Owen noticed him at once not because he moved, but because he did not.

He sat absolutely still, as if he had been there for years. His face was narrow and bloodless, his hair a thin silver swept behind the ears, his eyes hooded but very bright. There was something ecclesiastical about him, though not in any comforting sense. He looked like a minister defrocked for cruelty, or a judge who had confused punishment with righteousness so long ago he no longer remembered the distinction.

The clerk asked if Owen needed help.

“Just looking,” Owen said.

The old man smiled without showing teeth.

“That is how it begins,” he murmured.

Owen turned. “Excuse me?”

The clerk either had not heard him or pretended not to. He busied himself with a receipt printer that had suddenly begun to chatter.

The old man lifted one hand from the cane and gestured toward the rifles behind him.

“Most people believe they choose these,” he said. His voice was soft but had an odd carrying power, each word landing with careful weight. “But objects have their devotions too. They wait for the hand fitted to them. They have a patience greater than ours.”

Owen should have left then. Instead he found himself stepping closer.

“I know you,” the old man said.

“No,” Owen replied, though the denial came weakly.

“Not by name. By trade.”

A pulse began to throb in Owen’s neck.

The old man’s gaze shifted to the nearest rifle on the rack, a black carbine with a rail system like exposed vertebrae. “There are houses in the world,” he said, “and there are lineages. Men think they invent lineages because they stamp their trademarks into steel. It is the other way round. The lineage chooses its workshops. It passes from forge to forge, flag to flag, century to century. Sword, musket, repeater, carbine. Each age gives it the body it deserves.”

Owen swallowed. “What are you talking about?”

At that the old man looked at him fully, and the eyes were so pale they seemed almost colorless.

“I am speaking,” he said, “of Sira.”

The name entered Owen like cold water poured down the spine.

He took a step backward. “Who told you that?”

The old man’s smile broadened very slightly. “He did.”

From the wall behind him came a soft metallic tick, as though one of the rifles had shifted on its peg.

The clerk looked up at last. “You okay, sir?”

Owen glanced toward him, grateful for the interruption, but when he looked back the old man had not moved by so much as a breath.

“What is Sira?” Owen asked, before he could stop himself.

The old man considered him. “A principality,” he said at last. “A hunger. A masculinity severed from mercy. The ecstasy of force. He has worn many names. Mars in polished marble. Tyr in frost. empire, nation, defense, honor, destiny. He likes whatever title men use when they want to kill without having to call it killing.”

Outside, a gust of wind struck the building and made the front glass shiver in its frame.

“He is not the gun,” the old man continued. “Do not make that mistake. The gun is only his favored mask in your age. He resides wherever metal extends grievance faster than conscience. But certain forms suit him especially well. Repetition suits him. Modularity suits him. Civilian devotion suits him. A thing built not only to fire, but to signify. To reassure. To threaten. To complete a certain kind of broken man by giving his fear a skeleton.”

Owen wanted to laugh, or curse, or walk out, but all three impulses failed in him. “Who are you?”

“A witness,” said the old man. “Too late, as witnesses usually are.”

Then, leaning forward slightly:

“And perhaps a coward. I have seen him before.”

The shop lights flickered. For one impossible instant every rifle in the place seemed to deepen in color, black turning to a kind of abyssal sheen that swallowed reflection. Owen smelled hot oil and something else beneath it—something like a battlefield after rain.

“When?” he asked.

The old man tapped the cane once on the floorboards.

“Whenever men discover that industry can manufacture destiny.”

The clerk finally intervened, smiling uneasily. “Sir, are you shopping for anything in particular?”

Owen blinked. The old man was simply an old man again, thin hands folded over his cane, expression faintly amused.

“No,” Owen said hoarsely. “No, I think I’m done here.”

He left without remembering the walk to his truck.

That night the dream returned, but now the hall of rifles was a cathedral. The black floor stretched farther than sight, and the planted weapons rose in long aisles beneath an unseen vault. At the far end stood Sira.

He was not monstrous in shape. That was the most dreadful thing. He possessed the severe beauty of authority, tall and lean, clad in something like a military coat cut with liturgical elegance. His face was gaunt, his mouth composed, his eyes dark hollows lit by a disciplined fire. He looked neither young nor old. He looked inevitable. Around him there clung no chaos, no slobbering demonic frenzy, but order—perfect, ceremonial, merciless order.

When he spoke, his voice was the sound of boots in a corridor, of bolts sliding home, of a crowd falling silent before a podium.

You have helped build my chapels, he said.

Owen tried to run, but in dreams one rarely runs well.

The rifles all around him began to whisper.

Not loudly. Not with words at first. Only a susurrus like men reciting vows under their breath.

Then one voice separated itself from the rest, and Owen realized with horror that it was his own.

He woke with his throat raw and his hands clasped together as though in prayer.

His wife was already up.

He could hear the TV in the kitchen serving up the news.

There had been another shooting.

51RA

They stamped his body in sections beneath white factory lamps.

The men on the line did not know his name, though some of them felt it move in the machines before ever they heard it. They knew only that the air in Bay 4 had changed over the past few months. It had become charged in some way difficult to explain without sounding foolish. Small things accumulated. The press would shudder once before starting, as if waking from unpleasant dreams. Finished receivers, lined in neat rows, sometimes gave off a smell like struck flint though no spark had touched them. More than one worker complained of hearing what sounded like breathing through ear protection, a slow, deliberate inhalation and release beneath the pounding of stampers and the whine of torque drivers. Most laughed it off. Factories had their noises, their quirks, their little ghost stories. Men who spent ten hours a day amidst repetitive thunder began to hear all sorts of things.

But Owen Kreel had worked the line for seventeen years, and he knew the difference between a bad bearing, a loose panel, and something for which there was no mechanical name.

The first time he truly noticed it, a lower receiver had come down the conveyor and stopped directly before him, though the belt was still moving and the others behind it continued their slow approach. That should not have been possible. Nothing stopped without jamming the line. Yet there it sat, black and unfinished, rocking ever so slightly as though it had arrived under its own intention. Owen stared at the serial engraving panel, waiting for the code to blink into the screen above his station.

Instead, for the briefest instant, he thought he saw letters already there.

S I R A

Then the belt jerked. The receiver slid on. The monitor filled with ordinary production data. Owen said nothing.

That night, he dreamed of a great hall filled with rifles standing upright like candles. Not piled, not racked, but planted muzzle-up in a black floor that shone like church stone after rain. Between them walked a tall figure in a long coat, his hands clasped behind his back, moving with the calm assurance of a bishop inspecting graves. Owen never saw his face clearly. Only the cheekbones, the severe brow, the mouth that seemed always on the edge of pronouncing sentence. The figure paused before one rifle and laid two fingers against the barrel almost lovingly. At once, all the others turned—not physically, for they had no heads to turn, but inwardly, spiritually—toward that touch, as brambles turn to light. Owen woke with his heart hammering so violently he thought for a moment that someone had been pounding on his chest from the inside.

By dawn, he had persuaded himself it was nothing.

That was before the first shooting of autumn.

The television over the breakroom refrigerator showed the same images all afternoon: parking lot tape fluttering in a cold wind, ambulances, a woman collapsed against the hood of a cruiser, children being led in a line with their hands on each other’s shoulders. The model name of the rifle was spoken and respoken by anchors with grave expressions and professionally moderated sorrow. Owen stood among the others holding a paper cup of coffee gone lukewarm in his hand. Nobody said much. A few cursed the killer. A few muttered about mental illness. One man began, reflexively, to complain about how the media would twist it, but even he could not summon conviction. On the screen the camera cut to a close-up of investigators carrying evidence bags. One bag contained part of a shattered black receiver.

Owen spilled his coffee.

There, just for a second, under the harsh bloom of the news camera, visible through blood smears and fingerprint powder, was a marking like a scratch or flaw in the metal. A tiny hooked incision near the serial block. Owen had seen it before. Three days earlier, at his own station, on a piece he had assumed defective and sent back down the line.

He told himself it could not be the same one.

But after that he began to see the mark everywhere.

Not on every unit. That would have been simple. This was worse. It appeared only on certain pieces, and never exactly the same way twice, yet always with the unmistakable coherence of a signature. Sometimes it looked like a hooked thorn. Sometimes like a stylized numeral. Sometimes like the vertical of an I crossed by accident. Once, after a twelve-hour shift, he found himself tracing it on a fogged bathroom mirror before realizing his finger had moved without instruction from his mind.

His wife, Mara, asked him twice that week if something was wrong. Owen told her he was tired. It was the season, he said. Mandatory overtime. Election noise. The world being what it was. He did not tell her about the dreams, nor that he had begun waking with words in his mouth that felt old and metallic, as though he had been sleeping with bullets under his tongue. He did not tell her that at work, when the riveters screamed and the line thundered and all the men bent in rhythm to the making, there were moments he felt less like a laborer than a priest attending some dreadful liturgy.

Soon he could no longer ignore the sense that the rifles were not being manufactured.

They were being prepared.

It was around this time that the old man came into the gun shop.

The shop stood forty miles from the plant, out past a line of cornfields already gone brown and a stand of bare trees black against the lowering sky. Owen had gone there before, though never with any real pleasure. He told Mara he was looking for parts for a deer rifle inherited from his father, which was not entirely false. In truth he had gone because he had started to feel that if there was an answer anywhere, it might lie not in the factory but in the places where the finished bodies came to rest before entering the hands of their owners. If there was a haunting, perhaps it deepened at the point of choosing.

The bell over the door gave a dull, funereal clatter as he entered. The shop smelled of old wood, solvent, rubber mats, and a faint undernote of mildew. Rifles lined the walls in patient ranks. Glass cases held pistols like relics. A television in the corner played a hunting show with the sound turned off. Behind the counter stood a young clerk with a trimmed beard and an eagerness in his face that made him look almost childlike. Near the back, seated beside a rack of black semi-automatics, was an old man in a dark coat with a cane laid across his knees.

Owen noticed him at once not because he moved, but because he did not.

He sat absolutely still, as if he had been there for years. His face was narrow and bloodless, his hair a thin silver swept behind the ears, his eyes hooded but very bright. There was something ecclesiastical about him, though not in any comforting sense. He looked like a minister defrocked for cruelty, or a judge who had confused punishment with righteousness so long ago he no longer remembered the distinction.

The clerk asked if Owen needed help.

“Just looking,” Owen said.

The old man smiled without showing teeth.

“That is how it begins,” he murmured.

Owen turned. “Excuse me?”

The clerk either had not heard him or pretended not to. He busied himself with a receipt printer that had suddenly begun to chatter.

The old man lifted one hand from the cane and gestured toward the rifles behind him.

“Most people believe they choose these,” he said. His voice was soft but had an odd carrying power, each word landing with careful weight. “But objects have their devotions too. They wait for the hand fitted to them. They have a patience greater than ours.”

Owen should have left then. Instead he found himself stepping closer.

“I know you,” the old man said.

“No,” Owen replied, though the denial came weakly.

“Not by name. By trade.”

A pulse began to throb in Owen’s neck.

The old man’s gaze shifted to the nearest rifle on the rack, a black carbine with a rail system like exposed vertebrae. “There are houses in the world,” he said, “and there are lineages. Men think they invent lineages because they stamp their trademarks into steel. It is the other way round. The lineage chooses its workshops. It passes from forge to forge, flag to flag, century to century. Sword, musket, repeater, carbine. Each age gives it the body it deserves.”

Owen swallowed. “What are you talking about?”

At that the old man looked at him fully, and the eyes were so pale they seemed almost colorless.

“I am speaking,” he said, “of Sira.”

The name entered Owen like cold water poured down the spine.

He took a step backward. “Who told you that?”

The old man’s smile broadened very slightly. “He did.”

From the wall behind him came a soft metallic tick, as though one of the rifles had shifted on its peg.

The clerk looked up at last. “You okay, sir?”

Owen glanced toward him, grateful for the interruption, but when he looked back the old man had not moved by so much as a breath.

“What is Sira?” Owen asked, before he could stop himself.

The old man considered him. “A principality,” he said at last. “A hunger. A masculinity severed from mercy. The ecstasy of force. He has worn many names. Mars in polished marble. Tyr in frost. empire, nation, defense, honor, destiny. He likes whatever title men use when they want to kill without having to call it killing.”

Outside, a gust of wind struck the building and made the front glass shiver in its frame.

“He is not the gun,” the old man continued. “Do not make that mistake. The gun is only his favored mask in your age. He resides wherever metal extends grievance faster than conscience. But certain forms suit him especially well. Repetition suits him. Modularity suits him. Civilian devotion suits him. A thing built not only to fire, but to signify. To reassure. To threaten. To complete a certain kind of broken man by giving his fear a skeleton.”

Owen wanted to laugh, or curse, or walk out, but all three impulses failed in him. “Who are you?”

“A witness,” said the old man. “Too late, as witnesses usually are.”

Then, leaning forward slightly:

“And perhaps a coward. I have seen him before.”

The shop lights flickered. For one impossible instant every rifle in the place seemed to deepen in color, black turning to a kind of abyssal sheen that swallowed reflection. Owen smelled hot oil and something else beneath it—something like a battlefield after rain.

“When?” he asked.

The old man tapped the cane once on the floorboards.

“Whenever men discover that industry can manufacture destiny.”

The clerk finally intervened, smiling uneasily. “Sir, are you shopping for anything in particular?”

Owen blinked. The old man was simply an old man again, thin hands folded over his cane, expression faintly amused.

“No,” Owen said hoarsely. “No, I think I’m done here.”

He left without remembering the walk to his truck.

That night the dream returned, but now the hall of rifles was a cathedral. The black floor stretched farther than sight, and the planted weapons rose in long aisles beneath an unseen vault. At the far end stood Sira.

He was not monstrous in shape. That was the most dreadful thing. He possessed the severe beauty of authority, tall and lean, clad in something like a military coat cut with liturgical elegance. His face was gaunt, his mouth composed, his eyes dark hollows lit by a disciplined fire. He looked neither young nor old. He looked inevitable. Around him there clung no chaos, no slobbering demonic frenzy, but order—perfect, ceremonial, merciless order.

When he spoke, his voice was the sound of boots in a corridor, of bolts sliding home, of a crowd falling silent before a podium.

You have helped build my chapels, he said.

Owen tried to run, but in dreams one rarely runs well.

The rifles all around him began to whisper.

Not loudly. Not with words at first. Only a susurrus like men reciting vows under their breath.

Then one voice separated itself from the rest, and Owen realized with horror that it was his own.

He woke with his throat raw and his hands clasped together as though in prayer.

His wife was already up.

He could hear the TV in the kitchen serving up the news.

There had been another shooting.