That’s what I fear: being subtracted from myself. Negation. Forced against my will to become a beast.

I can’t be yours forever, Mab,” I told her, the words flying into my mouth as if by magic. “I already belong to someone else. I belong to Alice!

She smiled at him like a freshman invited to the senior prom. It made my blood boil.

During our time together in this place Holly didn’t outright avoid me or treat me rudely. But she wasn’t—how do women like to put it? She wasn’t emotionally available to me.

To write your dreams of fantasy, is to create fantasy in another’s dreams

At the witching hour, the city was totally silent. Only the wind of portent blew through the gathered council of whispering brick chimneys on the rooftops, delivering the hand that would write upon the wall.

Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Seven, Richie thought. That’s the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

I discovered news of old horrors in old books; read intelligence of old atrocities in old periodicals; always in the back of my mind, every day a bit louder, I heard the seashell drone of...

…there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening...

I nearly forced my own way through the undergrowth to leave the sight behind. I was afraid I’d encouraged the figure to advance by trying to see it, perhaps even by thinking about it. (“The...

Lover When You’re Near Me”)

Do you realize that a middle-class couple, one archaeologist, one dolls’ expert, can’t move from their house because ancient spirits are blocking them in? It’s a reasonable sort of day’s experience, isn’t it?

Remember that if I were born of the underworld, you were born of flowers. You are the blood the forest feeds upon, and it is you who gave the woods their dark magic. Time doesn’t...

Either way, it happened, and everyone was going to pretend that it didn’t.

Good horror is written by people who understand that fear is one of the cardinal passageways into the core of humanity. Good horror is generally written by folks who grew up on horror; books, movies,...

The less one knows about meat, the more one is able to enjoy it. Meat tastes wonderful, of course, but as with the lad hawking hard-to-find wares at unbelievable prices, it’s best not to ask...

Leaning forward in the chair, Harley squeezed out a controlled fart, so no one could hear it. This damn reception area was like a echo chamber. If he weren’t careful, it could reverberate around the...

Muchos han observado que el miedo supremo es el temor a lo desconocido. Me permito disentir. Creo que el peor terror es el que nos infunde el mismo conocimiento, la pura razón, la certeza fáctica...

The century’s getting old and stale; it needs new tribes.

Host: For those of you just tuning in, our guests tonight are the amazing Murder Magician, and his lovely minion, The Assistant…Assistant: Charmed, I’m sureHost: Who recently killed The Rumor. And you were awarded the...

I found a brief piece of by Antonio Vivaldi around this time which became my ‘Pinhead Mood Music’. Called Al Santo Sepolcro (At The Holy Sepulchre), it opens more like a piece of modern orchestral...

I’m haunted. We all are, I guess. We’re parentless, friendless, unloved, abandoned. The spirits of our deceased emotional anchors and proofs of existence will follow and demean us until we too roam a quiet lifeless...

WEST SALEM ~ October 2011A sudden vision, fraught with malevolence and darkness, obscured her sight. The face of a menacing figure turned from the shadows of his grisly handiwork and stared at Sorcha.Her muscles tensed....

If you let something scare you to death, then the worst has happened.

It’s a rotten world, Miss Millick,’ said Mr. Wran, talking at the window. ‘Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. It’s time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began a rule...

Evil is nothing more than that, which was once divine, and has fallen into shit.” Indrid Night – Through A Glass Darkly.

The stink of rot and ruin, of old dreams, broken screams, and wicked, dirty little things.

Hurrying on, Barbee nodded to the workman as casually as he could. His skin felt goose-pimpled under the thin red robe, and he couldn’t help shivering to a colder chill than he felt in the...

I have no use for your body, for within its youth lies a rotten wench already deceased.

If he looks at me like that again Dottie will need a bucket and mop to get me back to my room.

When you love to kill and can do it as well as I can, then what better way to raise hell?” -Javier “Bones” Jones

The scratching came from the attic. At night, when Rory turned out the light I would lie awake and wait for it to skit, skit, skit lightly across the floorboards above our heads and down...

Brush snapped. The stag shambled forth from the outer darkness. It loomed above Scobie, its fur rank and steaming. Black blood oozed from gashes along its flanks. Beneath a great jagged crown of antlers its...

Our fiction is not merely in flight from the physical data of the actual world…it is, bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatic – a literature of darkness and the...

Wieder hob sie den Blick und richtete die Lampe auf ihr Gesicht. Sie schaute zum Fenster hinüber. Ihre Züge waren jetzt fast noch deutlicher. Sie konnte die Details um ihre Nase studieren, den Mund. Die...

Do you know what it’s like to kill a man? You just pushed a knife into living, moving skin and you realize you pierced a heart that beats against your sharp knife.-Lucas Tyrel

I had a million different dreams but none of them was stronger than the rest. In the end they probably would have paralyzed me.

Her world fragmented into dozens of sharp, cutting shards, shedding the salty blood and saltier tears that ringed the bitter cocktail of her despair. She was caterpillar and butterfly, both, caught in a cocoon of...

Horror was rooted in sympathy . . . in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.

I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.

Honey, you worry too much. Nothing is going to happen, I mean come on, you’re in the house of Mr. Hausefalle, the guru of home security! You’re probably safer over there than here.”- House Trap,...

The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up...

The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare; and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the...

The northern star changes its position every ten thousand years, but friendships can last for all eternity.— RJPeters

Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in.

Moonlight flooded in the windows and silvered the room, turning it into a lagoon of dreams

And she arose from her deathbed in a gossamer gown, with eyes the color of starlight and hair as black as the night. And those who were her captors trembled, for the scent of death...

I fear you may not be so lucky.

Dirge of the dying and the stench of fear,Black souls repent as hell draws near,” – Percy Pemmeney the smuggler, from Curse of Ancient Shadows.