No doubt that you have clicked this link on the promise of spine-tingling howls, gray graveyards, and walls running in crimson. Fret not, you've come to the right place. I must warn you though, from here the lights dim and the shadows stretch ever towards the witching hour.

Below lurk six storiestackled by yours truly early in my scare hunting career in a world of unnatural and imaginary things. The stories are by no means a “best of” horror set – I have picked tales that are not too long or too complicated and still manage to present consistent chills, worrisome pillow thoughts, and striking meditations on dark corners of the heart.

With no further ado, please, step forward: Sink your teeth in, or rather, roll up your sleeve, it's time you felt the bite.

1.) “The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (1924)

“In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound.”

There is seldom a tale Lovecraft spins that a similar ominous whirring and flapping does not start in the far reaches of the reader’s mind. He is master of the slow burn, wherein creeping existential terror magnifies and enlarges to bursting, exorbitant proportions. His characters often die, victims of mind breaking experiences and if not, are driven into fractured, nearly catatonic existences. The Hound has several traits of a classic “curse” tale. It begins in a graveyard, where we follow a couple of arrogant grave-robbers who stumble into eldritch powers, both malevolent and violent. It quickly pits its protagonist, and vicariously, the reader, against an unstoppable, physical manifestation of evil. It is a bit shorter than Lovecraft’s other tales, features accessible themes and is endowed with only one reference to Lovecraft’s true draw: the Cthulhu Mythos. This is a loosely connected fictional universe Lovecraft created featuring entities of cosmic origin and preternatural, mind-rending power. These things that crawl in the night, the gods human’s worship – they are all different names for the same unnameable, immortal, transcendent horrors that once trampled the Earth in their cosmic might. We are but dust to them. Have fun!

This story can act as a brilliant doorway into Lovecraft’s writing. It's charming in that it is quick, frightening, and provides a link to the broader world of Lovecraftian fiction.

Here’s a link to the story online: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/h.aspx

**If you enjoy this story, H.P. Lovecraft has an entire mythos of semi-connected fiction. His brand of existential horror is particularly potent. As such, he has been elevated to near legendary status amongst horror writers and fans.

2.) “The Crowd” by Ray Bradbury (1955)

“They were a ring of shifting, compressing, changing faces over him, looking down, looking down, reading the time of his life or death by his face, making his face into a moon dial, where the moon cast a shadow from his nose out upon his cheek to tell the time of breathing or not breathing anymore.”

If I was afraid of dying in a car accident before this story, I am now terrified. This tale is a spine-chilling exploration of the darker impulses of the everyday pedestrian. It is our propensity to observe, be attracted to, and even drink the sorrows of other people to satiate a more sinister aspect of our ego. It's an eerie account that follows one man through his aspirations to track down a group of people he repeatedly finds at scenes of car accidents, after meeting them on his own. The reader is treated to Bradbury’s dreamlike prose and foreboding evocation of the outer limits of fantasy. Our lead character is tortured by his observations at fatal car accidents and forces the reader to consider the reliability of the man’s point of view. Its ending is twisted and a shocker – not a typical horror ending, yet entirely horrible, in that enjoyable creeping darkness commentary-on-humankind sort of way. There is not enough that can be said for the tales spun by Bradbury, another weird fiction legend, who can summons velvet nightmares, leaving us in a trance, floating on a spectral wind.

This story can be found in October Dreams by Ray Bradbury. It is a superlative collection of short macabre stories. Also recommended in the same collection: “The Scythe”, “The Small Assassin”.

3.) “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill by Kelly Robson” (2016)

“Her guts writhed. Snakes fought in her belly, biting and coiling.
Feel that? That’s us working inside you.

This third torturous tale, is an ugly one, stained scarlet and quite striking in its depiction of explicit violence. Take this as a trigger warning, because its subject matter delivers violent metaphors that delve into serious issues about how indigenous women and women, in general, are treated in American society, with a specific focus on outside powers exerting control over their body. The writing is sharp, and the mystery of the story is engaging, dragging us along to the final act in fear of leaving our protagonist, Jessica, alone to the horror she faces. Her story starts a short while after her rape and murder, wherein we are introduced to an unsettling passenger that has taken up residence in her body. It has been a week since I’ve read it, and I am still striving to process all that’s packed inside. I’ve included the story because it is thrilling and leaves an abundance of questions. It resonates more formidable over time, as the reader tries to make sense of its meanings. One of the chief reasons I adore weird fiction is its power to arouse emotion and critical thought with allegorical force. The weird tale is capable of such sharpness, a strict morality that can sing a million notions in a phrase on the nature of this world. Robson is making a statement and that is an important piece to focus on. Stories like her’s can inspire readers to seek out other smart fiction and question our reality. This one has potential to knot your stomach and gouge out your heart, but also to force you to think.

Did I mention it takes place across the weekend before and on September 11th, 2001?

You can find this story in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2016, edited by Paula Guran.

4.) “The Yattering and Jack” by Clive Barker (1984)

“This endless game of hide and seek was to nobody’s benefit, and the Yattering’s immense frustration. It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to), worst of all it feared losing its temper completely and killing the man outright in an uncontrollable fit of pique.”

The Yattering and Jack, a curious monster tale, is injected with unsettling cosmic irony. We are introduced to Jack, a plain old everyday guy, and a demon known as the Yattering who has been commissioned by Hell to drive Jack insane. The story that ensues is an enlivening, comedic, and disturbing romp. The ideas presented subvert usual demonic haunting stories, wherein the entity mercilessly tortured a family until it is exorcised. Here, the Yattering has a mandatory code of ethics imposed by Hell on its demons, and a man seemingly immune to the acts of our increasingly frustrated devil. The Yattering and Jack are written beautifully. Clive Barker manages to write brilliant incisive prose that at times is on the verge of being poetic. It’s ending is a twist, and the fruitless efforts of the impish and nearly broken Yattering are a blast, and only gets more interesting when the reader becomes sympathetic to the demon.

The story is included in Barker’s breakout short fiction collection, Books of Blood Volume 1.(Note: It would be remiss not to let you know the remaining stories in Books of Blood are substantially more fist-to-the-gut sensual, and explicitly gory. They do however contain the wit and sharp writing of The Yattering and Jack. His stories will leave you scared and satisfied if maybe feeling a little dirty. The terror his words weave is sincere, and the depiction of his vision is bold.) Also see: “The Midnight Meat Train”.

5.) “Nightshift” by Stephen King (1970)

“Hall flashed his light about, and felt a cold satisfaction – premonition fulfilled. The rats had closed in around them, silent as death. Crowded in, rank on rank. Thousands of eyes looked greedily back at him. In ranks to the wall, some fully as high as a man’s shin.”

This gem of normal-day-gone horrifically-bloody-terrifying is the first story in Stephen King’s short story collection, Nightshift. The man has an unsettling ability to take the pinnacle of normal, rank and file scene, and eclipse it with a starkly insidious nightmare. This story is the second King story I have ever read, and it shifted my initial intrigue for short horror fiction to a surging hunger. Enter Hall, who has been hired to clean a textile mill, abandoned for years to a sinister blight of rats. What starts as a descent into a basement for simple extermination and cleaning becomes shrieking terror, as the men discover the rats have become a bloodthirsty legion. Perverted nature takes the stage here, where the rats have begun to develop curious new adaptations and have been growing to ferocious size. Bizarre and immediately fear inducing, this story plunges into a pit of rending fangs chewing away at our security, while King’s writing is unbearably suspenseful. Be prepared to feel the rats at your back and ankles.

This is the lead-off story in King’s Nightshift. It is a collection of short stories. If you enjoy this story, I cannot recommend the collection highly enough. For further reading: “The Mangler” and “I am the Doorway”.

Five tales. Five portals into sights and smells and sensations unknown. None foretell of happy endings, and all are bathed in blood and strange moonlight. Enjoy seeking out and reading these tales that threw me headlong into other realms, both spectrally dreamlike and frighteningly, maliciously, real.