First and foremost this was a beautifully written short story about love, grief, and loneliness. It was relatable and I really felt empathy for what they were struggling with. Intertwined is a dark, creepy, potentially horror (there are some pretty grotesque descriptions) story about fungus which I guess is what’s popular now, and I’m not hating it. There’s something about fungus that really creeps me out and Busby wrote it well. It definitely reminded me of T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, which I loved.

This was an excellent short story and totally worth the read…only reason it isn’t 5 ⭐️ is because I wish it was longer and we got to know the main characters better. Although that’s hard to do in a short story I would have liked more character development especially for the MC, which could have been done by just adding a few more pages.

***Thank you NetGalley, R.A. Busby, and Stelliform Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review***

I don't read a lot of short stories and I didn't realize this was one when I requested an ARC. This is not exactly what I usually read but I am glad I read it. I think it will be appealing to a lot of people. This is a creepy story but it mostly explores grief and loss. I particularly liked how the author wrote about grief and coping with it.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

R. A. Busby is my favorite body horror and other specific phobias, author. I've read a few of Busby's short, body horror stories in various anthologies and my first reading experience was "Bits" a short, sharp, shocks story about losing teeth and other "bits".
HOLES by R. A. Busby- deals with a fairly well-known fear, trypophobia (of which I am a sufferer). This is the tale of a woman who suffers a fear of holes. She embarks on a series of therapeutic attempts to lessen or eliminate her fear but to no avail. This has a great ending.
And of course, Corporate Body is part of the line of novellas I curated for Cemetary Gates called My Dark Library. It's medical body horror--scientific lab experiments.

You Will Speak for the Dead is about a man named Paul who professionally cleans hoarder houses. I loved all the conversation in the narrative surrounding hoarding and its connection to mental health, grieving, and loss. The last house Paul cleans is a real doozy...filled with SPORROR and I do NOT want to tell you anything else but prepare to:
Read the whole thing in one sitting
make cringing faces and gagging noises
and never want to be around mushrooms ever again! I will recommend this one in my regular lists of horror recs for certain tropes, forever!
I LOVED IT

4 stars

**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**

Basics
Authors: she/her
Genre: horror
Setting: hoarder's house
Themes: loneliness, memory, celebrating life through death
Mood: dry wit, grieving

Fav Quote
"This story, you understand, is a sort of
spore, a tiny living thing shed out into the world.
And maybe it will light on you, and you will breathe it in, and you will make it part of who
you are. And you too will speak for the dead."

Pros
+ viscerally gross
+ mushrooms, spores, filaments 🍄
+ mood-setting quote: "Still, not even after
my best workouts had my skin ever...crackled. As I ran my fingertips down my quads, something in there felt like half-defrosted
chicken, almost crispy. When I bent down, I spotted something growing on my foot."
+ Reminds me of my favorite house cleaning channel, Midwest Cleaning Magic. He's great to watch for cleaning tips or also some sarcastic, dry humor.
+ male genital body horror & gore

Neutral
/ Don't read this if you can't handle in-depth descriptions of hoarder filth.

Cons
- Need to suspend a lot of disbelief over the MC's reaction to his body's changes

TW: hoarding, death (mentions), body horror

This is such a weird, good novella. It manages to mix entire tones and genres deftly in a way I've pretty much never seen before. I will say, I loved elements and the ending, but the body horror in this was so intense that it triggered physical reactions I didn't know I was susceptible to. My skin was almost literally crawling. So be warned--if you have any issues with contamination triggers or mushrooms, be careful with this one--it's a lot!! But again, it's a great book with some really earnest messaging. And I want that freaking hedgehog teacup!!

A skin-crawlingly creepy novella of both mushroom and body horror, as well as the ways that grief connects and warps us. I loved everything it had to say about the interconnectedness of life and matter and how easily that translates itself to contagious horror.

I'm sure we've all had the experience of cleaning out a room, a closet, a storage unit, picking up an object, and knowing that we're just holding on to it for the memories, unsure of for just whose sake it goes back on the shelf, but unwilling to fully let it go. Busby absolutely nails that feeling and the slippery slope between that and fully resisting change, embracing rot instead, because somehow it is easier to rot than to let go.

There are moments of both full-body shudders and soul-deep pain, which is impressive for a novella, but this hits all of its notes deftly. Mushroom horror has such a unique feeling to it, and I love everything contained here.

R.A. Busby's short novella, 'You Will Speak For The Dead,' is a heart-breaking and deeply moving meditation on loss and memory, mediated through some well-crafted horrifying imagery of body horror. Centrally placed is the cleaning of a hoarder's house, a task that proves to be the beginning of a radical yet mysterious transformation for one of the cleaners: 928 Avirosa is more than a house; the home of an old female expert on mushrooms, yet a home hosting a massive and rapidly growing structure of branched, tubular filaments of fungi - the air carrying fungal spores, the floor covered by a fungal carpet. Enter Paul and his cleaning team. Paul starts hearing voices. He's growing "body carrots." Things seem to change and the changes progress quickly. But this is not a standard fungal infection: it's an infection of memory, of life, of sentience.

Thankfully, the author kept the botanical context at a minimum, avoiding long-winded explanations of scientific jargon. Instead, she goes deep into Paul's mind, almost unfolding his brain network for all to see and appreciate, turning the story into a travelogue of memory corridors which reach deep into the fungal sentience. And what Paul finds there complicates things, but also provides relief, compassionate understanding, empathy. A meeting of minds and souls and lives.

I would unreservedly recommend to everyone giving this a read. It won't resonate with horror readers only. The prose is gorgeous, the visuals sweetly nightmarish, the story's ambition fully realized with expertise and confidence.

Thank you to Stelliform Press and NetGalley for the chance of an early read. All opinions are my own.

We cling to treasures and memories throughout our lifetime. Some people form connections to everything they come in contact with and are engrossed with the fear of letting go. But we shouldn’t fear for everything always has existed and will continue on existing.
This story is both disturbing and beautiful at the same time.
It isn’t your typical haunting.
Paul makes a living cleaning hoarder houses. When he is hired for a job at 982 Avirosa, things take a turn for him both physically and mentally. The reader slowly and dreadfully realizes Paul is not quite himself anymore.

A huge shout out to Stelliform Press for the ARC opportunity!
And thank you to NetGalley for making it possible.

“You Will Speak For The Dead” by R.A. Busby
will be Published October 10, 2024.

I love it when short horror stories pack such a punch.
You Will Speak for the Dead is great at building dread and disgust.
A hoarders home houses something unique that leads to some body horrors of the scariest, most cringe inducing variety. It certainly had me squirming in my seat. But the story also contains a lot of heart.

If you like Nick Cutter, especially The Troop, The Breach, and The Deep, you're gonna love this one.
Also made me think of elements of T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead.
I'll never look at a mushroom the same...

5 stars

This was as close to perfect a short story as I've read in a really long time. The story is told from the POV of Paul a young man who works cleaning "hoarding houses". His crew gets a job cleaning out a house owned by a former scientist who's brother-in-law is moving her into assisted living. Once Paul gets inside the house, he finds a little hedgehog teacup and that is the start of a strange, horrifying, yet beautiful narrative.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this story. The writing is phenomenal, The way the author moves from humor, to horror, to heartbreaking grief, incredible. I highlighted so much I eventually had to stop because I was capturing the whole book! There were passages talking about grief and hoarding that literally had me sobbing.

The body horror is intense, this author does not pull her punches in that area. But somehow, in the midst of that horror, there is so much heart. I immediately looked this author up and downloaded two more stories from her and can't wait to read them.

This was so, so good. Go in totally blind, if you can help it. I would not recommend eating while reading.

this was.... disturbing but somehow kinda sweet???

we're following paul as he's navigating through life and his grief. as someone who cleans hoarder houses, he's used to picking up after others, but 928 avirosa is different. there's something in the house that is alive, growing and getting attached to paul (iykyk). he's even beginning to hear a voice that's speaking only to him.

as he's sifting through piles of "garbage" he realizes he's going through items that were once cherished by someone else. this leads to him thinking a lot about how people get into hoarder house situations and what it may mean when someone isn't able to let go of things. i enjoyed the commentary on grief and keeping things as a means to feel some kind of control when it feels like you have none. there were a few moments that got a little technical with the biology terms, but nothing to where you couldn't follow the story.

if you're into weird and gross body horror with a semi-unreliable narrator then you should check this one out. it's short enough to read in one sitting, but not so short where you feel like you could never get invested in the story. even after you close the book, it leaves you thinking about the content. surprisingly, i've found myself thinking back on the commentary about grief and death rather than the disgusting body horror (though that comes into mind from time to time too).

p.s. you'll probably want to take a shower after this one.

thank you to the author and stelliform press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

4.25 stars - Beautifully disturbing and horrifying - I was completely hooked from page one. Paul Simard cleans houses, specifically homes of hoarders, packed tight and overflowing with the things they'd loved. When he and his team are called in to clean 928 Avirosa, the home of an elderly biologist, Paul's life will never be the same. Within the walls of the house something is alive, growing, almost calling out - and then comes the voice in Paul's head. A story of fear, love, life, and death, this is a gorgeously written and quick but impactful read.

Thank you to Stelliform Press and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Loved it! It was an short an easy read but you'll be thinking and shuddering over it for a long time afterwards!
Very interesting take on the singularity of humanity and on an America's greatest fear, the cost of having to go to the doctor.

I am not going to lie. This is definitely motivating me to declutter my entire house. I try to do that anyway, but I am definitely going to throw out things now. a decade or so ago I did animal control and I had a few animal hoarding cases. I felt the moment when Paul smelled the smell and puked and I jumped when he smeared the stuff on his face.
I will never recover from this. NEVER.
Beautiful weird little book.

Perfect little novella that is somehow both emotionally resonant and completely horrific. Contains some images of body horror that I will never forget. You will never look at mushrooms the same way again.

Wow this was great. I read it in one sitting bc I genuinely couldn't put this down. The body horror was so well done that I honestly wanted to run to the mirror and check myself to see if everything looked ok lmao. I also loved the discussions about grief and hoarding. I would definitely recommend this, if you like fungi horror, grief horror and, of course, body horror. Also if you're looking for a quick read with a queer protagonist, this would be a great choice as well.

My only criticism is the cover. I think this book deserves a better one, maybe like the cover of What Moves the Dead. So sth that tells the reader immediately that this book is about fungi and body horror.

Note: will review this on Amazon as well, when the book is published.

This is an impressive, propulsive story that combines eerie , genuinely unsettling horror vibes with heartfelt meditations on human (and non-human) connections.

Our protagonist, Paul, cleans hoarder houses, and has just been tasked with tackling perhaps the most challenging home yet. At the start of the book, he is grieving both the loss of a romantic partner and the loss of his mother, and reflections on grief and loss, and how these relationships linger for us, frame the story. Yet - without getting into spoiler territory - the book is also quite hopeful and life-affirming at heart.

My favourite part of this was the straight up WTF body horror moments which took me by surprise. I was genuinely unsettled by many passages and that's saying a lot!

Thank you for the ARC!

A tad bit hard to follow at points with all the biology terminology but inevitably I ended up enjoying it in the end. A different take on grief in this short story. Some of the body horror was very interesting and unlike anything I’ve ever read before.

Beautiful, horrifying read. I’ve never read a book that made me feel so equally dirty and loved, like I both needed to take a shower and also hug a someone close. It’s terrible and lovely, full of fear, despair and ultimately hope. Highly recommend.