Favorites from Gothic Fantasy: Chilling Horror
Last Halloween, I was browsing through my local bookstore when my eyes fell upon the gloriously spooky covers of the Gothic Fantasy collection. Hard covers, antique vibes, and horror imagery—all I want in a book cover. I picked up the collection of Chilling Horror short stories to read over Halloween, and I came across some really great stories in this book. To carry on the creepy vibes post-Halloween, here is a list of my favorite short stories in Gothic Fantasy: Chilling Horror.
1. Ecdysis by Rebecca J. Allred
This is the first story in the collection, and it was a great introduction. This story is about a man who believes bugs are living within his body. He believes his mother, who suffered from the same delusion, placed the swarm of insects in his body, because she could not “feed” them anymore. This story was chock full of really gross bug imagery, and all I could think of was the swarm of man-eating beetles from The Mummy. The narrator is a very complex character with an interest in medical terminology, and he alludes to committing murder to feed these bugs.
2. The Dying Art by Glen Damien Campbell
This story follows a magician and his friend as they think of ways to improve the magician’s show. They devise a plan to rob the grave of a legendary magician who was buried with a journal filled with his greatest illusions. However, after robbing this grave, the magician dies in his sleep. A few days after the funeral, the friend receives a letter from the magician explaining that he took a paralytic as part of an illusion, requesting that he dig him up. There was a certain ending I was expecting, but this story went in a very different direction.
3. A Game of Conquest by David A. Elsensohn
This story was like a horror version of A Christmas Carol. A man is approached by the vengeful ghost of his business partner who claims he has been sent to take the man into the after life. Not ready to die, the man offers a deal over a game of chess. He wins, he lives. The ghost wins, he will go with him. The game is very intense, and the ending was fantastic.
4. Thing in the Bucket by Eric Esser
This story is about a barber who also serves as a doctor for his village. A young barmaid who is blissfully unaware of the wonders of menstruation comes to him, fearing for her life. He gives her a medication that will “drain her” within a few hours. For some gross reason, he saves the blood drained from her womb and tries to grow a baby in it, because he loves her and want to give her a reason to marry him. The doctor comes to find that the “baby” in the bucket needs a lot of blood, and if he does not provide, it will die. This was another story with a surprising plot and ending.
5. Worth the Having by Michael Paul Gonzalez
This is one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever read. It is about a young boy who is visited by a monster every Halloween. Once a year, the monster offers him whatever he wishes, but in exchange, the monster gets to feed off of him. The feeding is always weirdly sexual, and the boy wakes the following morning, fully intact. The description of the monster makes me think of some kind of weird, sexy Demagorgan from Stranger Things.
6. Extraneus Invokat by Ed Grabianowski
This story is about a man who witnesses his wife being possessed every night, though she remains unaware of these occurrences. I really enjoyed this story because of its anxious tone, and the description of whatever possesses this woman is truly frightening. It also has a great twist at the end.
7. The Man in the Ambry by Gwendolyn Kiste
This is my favorite story in the collection. In my opinion, its very similar to a creepypasta. This story is a series of letters written by a young woman who believes a man in living in the walls, and he occasionally hides in her closet to watch her. She writes him letters about the happenings of her life, even as she goes through college and gets married. This story, especially the ending, reminded me a lot of Slenderman.
Have you read this or any other books in the Gothic Fantasy collection? Have you read any of these stories?
