So here’s the second part of my list, albeit a day late - a horror story for every day in October, and all of them available for free online. I’ve tried to include a few classics by well-known authors, as well as some you might not have read before.
12. Laird Barron - In A Cavern, In A Canyon
Yeah, there was always going to be more than one Laird Barron story in the list, and here’s the second. It always impresses me when writers come up with entirely new creatures for their stories - it’s so easy to rely on our established myths, or to borrow from the mythology of other cultures, and creating something new is always the hardest option. So the “Help-Me Monster” is doubly impressive, both for being Barron’s own idea and for being so bloody creepy. There’s something about a monster that lures people in through our innate desire to help those in need that seems to add a level of cruelty that the more traditional monsters don’t have.
13. Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream
The concept of Hell was designed to terrify the gullible into submission, and it’s well-built for the job. The idea of eternal torture - that there’s no escape, nothing you can do to fix the situation - is deeply disturbing to me, and I’ve always been receptive to Hell stories. “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,” besides showing off Ellison’s genius for titles, is probably the best example of that particular subgenre of horror. The premise is simple - a mad supercomputer, having engineered the extinction of the human species, preserves four people to torture forever. In Ellison’s hands, though, it’s far more than just a list of atrocities; as he always did, he builds an emotional core into the story that lets it sink its teeth in all the deeper.
14. Junji Ito - The Enigma of Amigara Fault
I’m cheating a little bit on this one, as The Enigma of Amigara Fault is technically a manga rather than a short story, and the link goes to a Youtube animation of it, but still, Junji Ito is a writer/artist you don't want to miss.
The Enigma of Amigara Fault concerns a hillside that splits open during an earthquake, to reveal a series of human-shaped holes bored into the rock. Once the holes are revealed, people begin to feel drawn to particular holes - holes that fit their bodies exactly. Ito is a master of surreal horror, and in this as in all his work a strange premise builds to a terrifying conclusion.
15. Lottie Lynn - The Headfirst
What if there really were monsters under your bed? That’s the premise of this short, simple, but highly effective piece by Lottie Lynn. The problem with very short stories, of course, is that I can’t tell you too much about the plot without ruining the effect (and I’ve now said that about so many stories in this list that I’m running out of new ways to phrase it), but what I can say is that Lottie creates a great deal of dread in very few words, using a premise so well-worn that I wouldn’t have thought anyone could make it seem fresh. I always appreciate a writer who can breathe new life into horror cliches.
16. David Nickle - The Sloan Men
I reacted physically to this story in a way that I didn’t to anything else on this list. Halfway through, I realised that my heart was beating as though I’d just finished a run; the adrenaline rush I got from “The Sloan Men” was like nothing I’ve ever had from reading, and for a day or more after finishing the story, I was still freaked out. Lines from it would come back to me at odd times, and I’d feel that same physical shock of fear. Nickle is an astonishing talent, and he deserves to be more widely known.
17. Sofia Samatar - How To Get Back To The Forest
Sofia Samatar is a Somali-American writer of poetry and prose, and her experience as a poet bleeds into her fiction. Her stories have the feeling of being textured, like fine clothing - layers of language piled so thickly you could touch them. A lot of what she writes isn’t horror, and I’m not sure if this one really is, but fuck it, it’s close enough, and there’s no way I was going to let this liat go by without inxluding at least one Samatar story.
18. Carmen Maria Machado - The Husband Stitch
The horror of “The Husband Stitch” is rooted in the very real terrors that patriarchal society inflicts on women, but Machado doesn’t let the message do the work. The world of “The Husband Stitch” is surreal and disturbing in all the right ways, and finding her work made me realise how many great female horror writers I’d been sleeping on. Check out her collection Her Body and Other Parties for more.
19. Sofia Samatar - The Huntress
Yeah, it’s another Samatar. This one is challenging to write about, because it’s so short - how much can you really say about a four-hundred-word short story? “The Huntress” reminds me of the best of Angela Carter’s work - prose that reads like poetry, and could carry a story this short purely on its own merits; a strange and dreamlike approach to storytelling that privileges texture over narrative; and a willingness not to explain things, to let the audience wonder what exactly is going on without even giving them enough information to figure it out for themselves. Sometimes, the wondering is the point.
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