This was originally supposed to be a three-part series, but I haven’t had as much time to read as I would have liked (or, more accurately, I’ve been fucking lazy). So here’s the fourth and final installment of 31 Great Horror Stories You Can Read Online for Free.
26. Caitlin R Kiernan - Houses Under the Sea
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There’s an atmosphere of failure that suffuses this story, a malaise that seems to spread to the reader from the protagonist almost without you noticing; you feel the man’s failure, and the depression he feels at having been powerless to stop what happened to his lover (even while he is unsure of what exactly did happen to her). His internal landscape mirrors the drab, run-down seaside town in which the story takes place, and it’s a testament to Kiernan’s skill as a prose stylist that you never notice her trying to push that atmosphere on you - it happens as if by accident, seeping through the page like a communicable stain.
You’ll notice I haven’t said much about the story. That’s because the events of “Houses Under the Sea” are deliberately vague, and most of the clarifying detail comes near the end of the piece. To tell you as much as I without spoiling it, then, the unnamed narrator is recovering from a relationship with the leader of an ocean-worshipping cult. Read this if you like original takes on cosmic horror.
27. Caspian Gray - Centipede Heartbeat
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Centipedes, man. Fucking centipedes. There’s something uniquely creepy about anything that inhuman, especially once you read about species as long as your forearm that eat motherfucking bats. Caspian Gray takes full advantage of the creepiness of centipedes in this short story, and manages to wrong-foot the reader right at the very end - if you think you know what’s happening, prepare to be surprised.
28. Jeff Vandermeer - No Breather in the World But Thee
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I won’t tell you what happens in this one, because I haven’t a clue. In any other writer’s hands, a piece of work like this could have ended up seeming pointlessly surreal, just weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Vandermeer, however, made me sympathise with the characters trapped in some unexplained Hell. The little bits of interior monologue we get from each character let the reader in just enough to feel their despair, and it’s that connection that pulls the story together.
29. Brit Mandelo - And Yet, Her Eyes
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I love it when a writer sneaks a positive note into a horror story, and I love it even more when a writer knows when to leave things unexplained. Brit Mandelo achieves both those things in a story that tells the audience as little as possible, because it doesn’t matter what exactly it is that Sasha brought back with her from Afghanistan; what matters is what it does, the effect it has on her relationship and her sense of self. Read this if you like horror with a personal touch.
30. Kaaren Warren - All You Can Do Is Breathe
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To me, this is a terrifying story because Warren personifies depression. She turns an abstract thing into a guy who steals everything about your life that matters - the colour, the joy, the reason you have to exist, Sometimes, the most frightening monsters are the real ones.
31. Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Call of Cthullu
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Of course, I couldn’t finish the list without sticking in some Lovecraft, and what better example of his work than the one that gives us our most complete look at his most famous monster? If you’ve a horror fan, you probably know how this one goes already, so I’ll not bore you by rehashing it; if you’re new to Lovecraft, I won’t rob you of the experience of encountering him blind. Yeah, the guy was so racist that people thought he was too racist at a time when lynching was considered family entertainment - but he was also a damn good writer.
Well, there you have it - your horror stories for the rest of the month. Enjoy, and happy Hallowe’en!
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