The Thing In The Lake by Conor Metz

 

Billy McGregor just wants to enjoy his summer before high school, but a creature lurks within his lake and seems to be picking off the residents one at a time. As a horror-buff, he’s quick to pick up on this and with nobody else seeming to notice, it’s up to him and his friends to take matters into their own hands.

But they aren’t the only ones after the creature.

A local cop realizes the several deaths are linked and an organization called SID is trying to cover it up. They have their own plans for the creature, but if they don't capture it quickly, things could spiral out of control due to a potential for infection. A single bite or scratch will turn any person it injures into another one of its kind.

It’s a race for who can deal with the creature first, but will any of them be successful against a genetically engineered killing machine?

It begins with an accident on a rain slicked road. If not for that, the "thing" may have never escaped, leaving death and a fate worse than death in it's wake. Then again, if not for that rain slicked road nobody may have ever found out about the ghastly experiment that has gone so terribly awry. This was a fast paced creature feature story and it doesn't take long from the time of it's escape for the "thing" to make its presence known in the most gruesome of ways. I enjoyed the relationships between Billy and his friends, and I was rooting for them to be able to handle this creature. I even liked the annoying older sister but I did wish the focus was more on the creature and it's victims and less on the not quite government/not quite military SID agents.

3.5 stars, that I will round up to 4 on sites that don't allow half stars.

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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About the author

CONOR METZ was born in Renton, Washington in 1984. His early years exposed him to a variety of outlandish films, novels, and comics books, which have shaped him into the writer he is today. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington.

Double Barrel Horror: Highway Hunger / Motel Madness by Calvin Demmer

 

Two Twisted Tales from author Calvin Demmer.

"Highway Hunger" pits a young road worker against an urban legend with a taste for living flesh.

"Motel Madness" is the last stop on the way to another world, where they'll be expecting you.

These two short stories are a quick and creepy good time.

In Highway Hunger a court ordered community service gig is more than just a punishment as one man comes face to face with a road demon.

In Motel Madness a woman awakens in a strange room with no memory of how she arrived or what has happened to her traveling companions.

Both stories share an underlying theme of revenge and retribution with a bit of dark humor thrown in.

4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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About the author

Calvin Demmer is the author of The Sea Was a Fair Master and Dark Celebrations. When not writing, he is intrigued by that which goes bump in the night and the sciences of our universe.

Blood Wail by Jae Mazer

 

Every night, sisters Saoirse and Imogen beg their Dadai to read to them from an old storybook, Tales from Ramnon. They’re entranced by the mythical creatures described within its weathered pages. But when tragedy devastates their blissful childhood, the book is closed, and the sisters are forced to cope with a loss darker than they could have ever imagined.

As Saoirse and Imogen grow into adults, they attempt to navigate their lives in County Cork, Ireland. But phantoms from their past have followed them, lurking in the shadows and wailing in the night. In desperation, one sister turns to drugs to quiet the horrors, while the other embarks on a journey to seek answers from the fables and myths of their childhood.   
BLOOD WAIL is a folk horror story about addiction, loss and pain, family and love, and the possibility of creatures beyond our understanding.  

Sometimes the stories are real.

Saoirse and Imogen reveled in the stories their father read to them nightly, but were left unprepared to deal with the night he didn't come home. There was far more to these stories that had been held back from young ears and dark secrets kept from the girls that will shape their adult lives. When they begin to see and hear the wailing mournful screams of the harbinger of death they tell no one. Not even each other.

 This dark folktale combines Irish legend with real life horror in a moving portrayal of one loving family's grief and loss. 

4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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About the author
Jae Mazer is a Canadian who was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and grew up in the prairies of Northern Alberta. After spending the majority of her life in the Great White North, she migrated south to Texas. She is a connoisseur and creator of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Many moons ago, a rampant love of reading led her to believe she could weave a good tale herself, and now she is an award-winning author with ten novels under her belt, as well as stories published in various anthologies.

Monster Carnival: An Anthology of Things, Beasts & Creatures

 This Halloween the monsters are real, and they are coming to your house! Shadow House Publishing opens the crypt and unleashes a MONSTER CARNIVAL!

Under the bed and behind the closet, in dank basements and gloomy attics…they are the whisper in the dark, the growl in the corner…they are everything we fear, and all that we secretly desire…they are us…they are MONSTERS!

MONSTER CARNIVAL: An Anthology of Things, Beasts, & Creatures, edited by supernatural horror author and critic WILLIAM P. SIMMONS, is an evocative anthology featuring the monsters that terrified us when we were children…and still do.

They’re all here, a paranormal parade of the dead, demonic, and devilish! Vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghouls, and blobs…unnamable entities and marvelous monstrosities, murderous severed hands and demonic frogs…every crawling, lurching, leaping, shambling THING that ever stalked a printed page.

They were the original bad boys of horror–the ugly outcast, the despised loner, the creature from the grave-basement-coffin-outer space-that everybody loved to be scared by (even as we secretly rooted for them). From ancient folklore bogies to inter-dimensional demons, this funerary feast of 22 classic and rare stories makes fear fun again.

Children of the night stalk in 22 tales from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten, from the gothic era to the 20th century. Contributors include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E.F. Benson, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Dunsany, and H.G. Wells alongside fear specialists Manly Wade Wellman, Frank Belknap Long, William Hope Hodgson, Henry S. Whitehead, and Robert E. Howard. Some chilling tales make their first appearance in decades, including monstrosities from Edward Lucas White, Victor Roman, Anthony M. Rud, Hume Nisbet, Ulric Daubeny, Augustus Hare, and several others.

Editor William P. Simmons leads this spectral spectacle, hand-picking supernatural, psychological, and weird tales for every torrid taste. From the bloody behemoths of pulp magazines to the terror titans of the Lovecraft circle, from classic supernatural monsters to mutants and slithery things with tentacles, this compendium of long legged beasties and ‘things that go bump in the night’ features an Introduction discussing the appeal of the monster in fiction.

Featuring a cast of creatures to delight and disgust, the Monster Carnival has something for everyone... Well everyone who is not afraid to plow full steam ahead into some very dark and disturbing worlds where creatures masquerade as human and family curses can ruin one's love life.

Most of these stories were new to me, since my knowledge of the classics is pretty limited to Poe and Lovecraft. This anthology includes monsters that were familiar to me, but aside from the usual werewolf and vampire fare it offers strange and unusual tales with creatures that as of yet had never made the acquaintance of my nightmares. I am sure that will change now that I have been introduced to several wondrous and horrifying beings. Read if you dare, and should you see something from the corner of your eye in the misty morning fog trust your vision and seek immediate shelter.

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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Monster Carnival Table of Contents:

• Here There Be Monsters, William P. Simmons
• Amina, Edward Lucas White
• Four Wooden Stakes, Victor Rowan
• The Hounds of Tindalos, Frank Belknap Long
• Mark of the Beast, Rudyard Kipling
• The Demon’s Spell, Hume Nisbet
• Jumbee, Henry S. Whitehead
• The Spectre Spiders, W.J. Wintle
• The Werewolf, Eugene O’Neil
• At the End of the Corridor, Evangeline Walton
• The Hoard of the Gibbelins, Lord Dunsany
• The Lurking Fear, H.P. Lovecraft
• The Sea Raiders, H.G. Wells
• Lot 249, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Voice in the Night, William Hope Hodgson
• The Vampire of Cronglin Grange, Augustus Hare
• Frogfather, Manly Wade Wellman
• Rukorokubi, Lafcadio Hearn
• The Death of Halpin Frayser, Ambrose Bierce
• The Beast with Five Fingers, W.F. Harvey
• The Sumach, Ulric Daubeny
• Ooze, Anthony M. Rud
• The Thing in the Hall, E.F. Benson
• About the Editor: William P. Simmons is a supernatural fiction author, critic, & journalist. Eight of his stories earned Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. By Reason of Darkness was praised by Publisher’s Weekly, All Hallows & Cemetery Dance. Graham Masterton, Hugh B. Cave & T.M. Wright endorsed his fiction. He has interviewed such authors as Richard Matheson, F. Paul Wilson & Caitlin Kiernan.
• SHADOW HOUSE PUBLISHING preserves our horror heritage!