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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I read this narrative long ago and it has lingered with me ever since. The named “summer people” are a family from New York, who rent an identical off-grid country cottage each year. On this occasion, instead of returning to urban life, they decide to lengthen their holiday a few more weeks – an action that appears to unsettle each resident in the surrounding community. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that no one has ever stayed at the lake after Labor Day. Even so, they insist to not leave, and that is the moment events begin to grow more bizarre. The man who supplies fuel won’t sell to the couple. Not a single person is willing to supply food to the cottage, and at the time they attempt to drive into town, the automobile won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries of their radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the two old people clung to each other in their summer cottage and waited”. What could be they anticipating? What could the residents know? Whenever I peruse this author’s chilling and thought-provoking tale, I recall that the best horror originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a couple journey to a typical beach community in which chimes sound continuously, a constant chiming that is bothersome and inexplicable. The initial very scary scene happens during the evening, at the time they choose to take a walk and they can’t find the ocean. The beach is there, there is the odor of decaying seafood and seawater, surf is audible, but the ocean appears spectral, or another thing and more dreadful. It is truly insanely sinister and every time I go to a beach at night I remember this narrative that destroyed the sea at night for me – in a good way.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, he’s not – return to their lodging and discover the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of confinement, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and deterioration, a pair of individuals aging together as spouses, the connection and aggression and gentleness in matrimony.

Not merely the most frightening, but probably among the finest short stories out there, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the first edition of these tales to be published in this country several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused Zombie near the water in the French countryside recently. Even with the bright weather I felt a chill within me. I also experienced the thrill of anticipation. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a block. I didn’t know if it was possible an effective approach to compose certain terrifying elements the book contains. Reading Zombie, I realized that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the novel is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the main character, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who slaughtered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in the Midwest during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was consumed with making a compliant victim who would never leave with him and carried out several horrific efforts to do so.

The deeds the novel describes are terrible, but just as scary is the psychological persuasiveness. The character’s terrible, fragmented world is simply narrated using minimal words, identities hidden. The reader is immersed trapped in his consciousness, obliged to observe mental processes and behaviors that appal. The strangeness of his mind is like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Starting Zombie is less like reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. At one point, the terror involved a dream during which I was confined in a box and, upon awakening, I realized that I had removed the slat out of the window frame, trying to get out. That house was crumbling; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, fly larvae came down from the roof onto the bed, and on one occasion a big rodent scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

When a friend gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out with my parents, but the story of the house high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to myself, nostalgic as I felt. It’s a book about a haunted noisy, emotional house and a female character who ingests limestone from the cliffs. I adored the novel so much and came back frequently to the story, always finding {something