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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by a master of suspense

I read this narrative some time back and it has haunted me ever since. The so-called vacationers happen to be a couple urban dwellers, who lease an identical remote lakeside house every summer. During this visit, in place of returning to the city, they opt to prolong their holiday a few more weeks – an action that appears to disturb each resident in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that not a soul has remained at the lake after the end of summer. Even so, the couple are determined to remain, and that is the moment events begin to get increasingly weird. The man who brings the kerosene refuses to sell to the couple. Not a single person agrees to bring groceries to the cottage, and as they try to drive into town, their vehicle refuses to operate. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people clung to each other in their summer cottage and waited”. What could be the Allisons waiting for? What do the residents understand? Every time I read the writer’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I recall that the top terror comes from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale two people travel to an ordinary seaside town in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying episode takes place during the evening, when they choose to take a walk and they can’t find the water. The beach is there, the scent exists of putrid marine life and brine, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or a different entity and more dreadful. It is truly deeply malevolent and every time I visit to the shore in the evening I think about this narrative that ruined the beach in the evening in my view – in a good way.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, the husband is older – head back to their lodging and learn the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden meets danse macabre chaos. It’s a chilling reflection regarding craving and decay, two people maturing in tandem as spouses, the bond and aggression and affection in matrimony.

Not only the most frightening, but perhaps a top example of brief tales out there, and a personal favourite. I experienced it en español, in the debut release of these tales to be released in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie near the water in France a few years ago. Although it was sunny I felt cold creep over me. I also felt the electricity of excitement. I was working on a new project, and I had hit a block. I wasn’t sure if it was possible an effective approach to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I realized that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a murderer, the main character, inspired by an infamous individual, the criminal who killed and cut apart multiple victims in a city during a specific period. Notoriously, the killer was consumed with making a compliant victim who would stay by his side and carried out several grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The deeds the story tells are terrible, but just as scary is its emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, fragmented world is directly described using minimal words, details omitted. The reader is plunged caught in his thoughts, obliged to observe ideas and deeds that horrify. The alien nature of his mind is like a tangible impact – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Entering this story is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and later started suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror involved a vision during which I was stuck in a box and, as I roused, I realized that I had torn off a piece from the window, attempting to escape. That home was falling apart; during heavy rain the downstairs hall flooded, maggots fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

When a friend gave me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the tale of the house high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to me, nostalgic as I felt. It is a story concerning a ghostly loud, atmospheric home and a young woman who consumes calcium off the rocks. I cherished the book immensely and came back frequently to it, each time discovering {something