Screams from the Dark

“No home for the faint of heart…”


Screams from the Dark dares to cross time, repeat it, and shed universes. It’s a home you don’t want to flee, until you do, and, then, it’s too late: you can’t. All one can do is make themself at home.

The stories herein will make you question reality, question yourself. Do you even know yourself? Are you even yourself? How can you be sure?

Falling just ever so slightly shy of 500 pages, this book (edited by Ellen Datlow, most exquisitely) contain galaxies, both within and beyond the grasp of our, say, common realty, our shared and for the most part understood human experiences.

There’s no shortage of masterfulness here, no shortage of brain-shocking, eye-bulging delights of horror.

Wet Red Grin by Gemma Files is a horror show of the highest order. And, I’m not saying I’m the stillest person, the kind that can just sit, and then sit some more, all calm and chill and relaxed, like I were meditating or some such. Not at all, no. I should probably have a fidget spinner for every day of the week, maybe some extras just in case, but that there is, well,

I have a tendency to lose things almost as powerful as my tendency to not be able to sit still, to always have to be moving, always be keeping my body up to speed with what all’s going on in my mind, which tends to be a whole lotta go, go, go.

Anyrate, Wet Red Grin, yeah. I’m hard pressed to think of being squirmier than I was while reading that one. Any squirmier, really, and I may have had to put the book down. Files is good at that, good at sucking you into the world in the pages, all while setting you up for immense dread. Fun dread, sure –– that’s horror –– but dread nonetheless.

Three Mothers Mountain by Nathan Ballingrud is the sort of story that, reading it, I’m just kind of generally happy to be here reading such tales, writing about them, and doing so comfortably from my room, my car, the line at the taqueria, wherever I may be reading, doing so in a safety not present for these characters.

Sweet Potato by Joe R Lansdale is… it’s dark, yeah, and it’s delightfully so through and through. It conjures Lynch thoughts, that darkness in small towns, in suburbia, the bloody mess just under the surface, but it’s not Lynch, not at all. This is Lansdale. Pure and simple. No matter who he’s writing about, what he’s writing about, where he’s writing about, all of that, it all still comes down to him writing in his own genre: The Lansdale Genre.

Knock, Knock by Brian Evenson is as unsettling as anything he’s previously written, and is completely unputdownable. Evenson never ceases to amaze me. Never is skincrawling so pleasant and welcome.

Burial by Kristi DeMeester is so, so, so delicious in its wickedness. I wish it were longer. And, I’m not faulting it at all, the story, not faulting DeMeester either. The story, it is as long as it needs to be, perfectly so, but as I freely admit, and often, I am reading greedy. I want more. I want it all. But then, maybe it will grow bigger, run further. I can easily –– please let it be so –– see this adapted into a feature film. That day comes, I’m there, so there, ticketed up well in advance, anxiously waiting take my seat.

And then

Then there’s Children of the Night by Stephen Graham Jones. There be monsters here, yes. Monsters and horror. And laughs. Jones strikes the perfect horror balance: tension, scare, laughter release. There’s no better rollercoaster. This one, Children of the Night, it’s hands down the most delightful, thrill-smile inducing of stories in this anthology. It is, in its relatively short page count, exactly why I love horror.

There is so much more in this book, too, so many more stories. Each is a world worthy of exploration. Necessary, even. Open the door, take a leap, crawl and climb. You won’t be sorry.

I received this ARC via a link to Netgalley sent to the Horrorbound.net team.

This is a large collection of excellent stories. Honestly, it took me almost a month to read it all, but a part of me also really didn't want it to end. Every new story brought with it interesting and strange facets, and they were all worth reading. There are so many talented and freaky authors collected within this monster of a book, and it is a clear testament to Ellen Datlow's unbelievable skills as an editor who chooses only the best.

While each of these were unquestionably entertaining and special, there were a couple that I found to be total knock-outs:

"You Have What I Need" by Ian Rogers - A wicked opening story about working in an ER with vampirism being a very real issue. A monster story with more memorable humanity in it than I can bear to forget.

"Wet Red Grin" by Gemma Files - Probably my favourite one in this whole book. Just an absolutely terrifying concept borne of an old ritual of the "reddening of bones." I found myself reading all about the historical context of this ritual afterwards and was astonished by how cool it was that Gemma Files invented this terrifying story from that idea.

"The Atrocity of Exhibitionists" by Brian Hodge - As I write this, I realize that this story is competing for first place with the one from Gemma Files. I want to tell everyone about this story's concept. We are in an age of social media that includes a ravenous need for attention and likes. More frighteningly, people seem to believe everything they read online and can no longer think for themselves. Loved this one so much.

"Crick Crack Rattle Tap" by A.C. Wise - A startling tale of a new mother and her steadily darkening thoughts mixed with some disturbing folklore. "The Blair Witch" meets postpartum depression.

"The Smell of Waiting" by Kaaron Warren - This story felt like a mix of "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King and "From the Corner of His Eye" by Dean Koontz. It had dogs, a kind of chemically induced supernatural ability, and it left me with such a remarkably empty and used up feeling at the end. In a good way.

"Three Mothers Mountain" by Nathan Ballingrud - A story about witches who grant the requests of townspeople desperate enough to seek their services, and the prices paid for those 'gifts.' The imagery from this story will stay with me until I am in the ground.

"Bloedzuiger" by John Langan - This guy knows how to spin a yarn. He also seems to love writing disturbing stories about fishing that compel me to feel dread when near any bodies of water. Mixing Danish scenery with blood sucking creatures, this one is a winner.

Honourable mentions for Stephen Graham Jones' "Children of the Night" and Brian Evenson's "Knock, Knock." Just reviewing the stories I feel so excited about how great they all were and I am so pleased that I got to read this in advance. Pick it up when it comes out in June 2022!

This humourous, frightening collection of horror stories was really captivating and I will be recommending it to every horror fan I know.