Dark Horror

Published in 1927, Scottish writer John Buchan's Witch Wood is set in a rural parish located in the Scottish Borders during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The story centers around newly ordained minister David Sempill's arrival in Woodilee in the wake of the Church of Scotland's acceptance of the Solemn League and Covenant and explores themes and issues surrounding religious tolerance and seventeenth-century Calvinism. With pagan rituals, an outbreak of the plague, and rumors about fairies and the devil, Witch Wood also delves into the supernatural and occult.

In the war-torn rubble of the human world, can a rebel elf and a lost dragon prince find love, or will a dark threat tear them and their world apart forever? A new land, a new court, a new king, but some things never change. Broken in all ways, Akiem fled his life as the amethyst prince only to land at the mercy of the beautiful but deadly diamond king, Luceran. Akiem knows dragons. He knows he’ll die today, tomorrow, whenever Luceran’s executioner brings down his axe, and maybe it’s all he deserves.

When rock guitarist Ash Hudson suffers a career-ending hand injury, she seeks out the only thing that can heal it - her hometown's darkest secret. For decades the residents of Hollow Hills, Pennsylvania, have offered their diseased and injured body parts to a creek demon named Snare. In return, Snare rewards its Traders with healthy replacement parts. There's only one catch: if Traders leave town, their new parts vanish forever. Ash wants a new hand, but living in Hollow Hills isn't an option. Not when her band is one gig away from hitting the big time.

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers and listeners of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn. Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales's original publication run.

There are things in this world that men and women aren't meant to understand. We aren't supposed to know these things exist, much less how to fight them. The things that go bump in the night, the monsters in the closet, the shadow out of the corner of your eye - that's where I live.

I didn't ask for her as my bride. I just made her mine. Her father had to be taught what happens when you cross a King, but that isn't why Genevieve Rossi is sore, well-used, and waiting for me to claim her in the only way I haven't already. She's sore because she thought she could embarrass me in public without being punished. She's well-used because after I spanked her I wanted more, and I take what I want. She's waiting for me in my bed because she's my bride, and tonight is our wedding night.

When Kian confesses his true nature, Syssi is not as much shocked by the revelation as she is wounded by what she perceives as his callous plans for her. If she doesn't turn, he'd be forced to erase her memories and let her go. His family's safety demands secrecy - no one in the mortal world is allowed to know that immortals exist. Resigned to the cruel reality, Syssi is determined to enjoy what little time she has with Kian, one day at a time.

In the dark and dangerous Warhammer world, the desperate and the depraved live hand in glove. In this anthology of stories, reacquaint yourself with some of its more morally ambiguous denizens, including ‘Filthy’ Harald Kleindeinst and the scryer Rosanna Ophuls, Baron Johann von Mecklenberg, playwright and self-confessed genius Detlef Sierck and, of course, the vampire Genevieve.

Kit Gordy sees Blackwood Hall towering over black iron gates, and she can't help thinking, This place is evil. The imposing mansion sends a shiver of fear through her. But Kit settles into a routine, trying to ignore the rumors that the highly exclusive boarding school is haunted. Then her classmates begin to show extraordinary and unknown talents. The strange dreams, the voices, the lost letters to family and friends, all become overshadowed by the magic around them.

Upon a time. Remember the faery stories you were told as a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons... What if one day you found they were true? What if, when you became an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real? That's what happened to Thom Kindred. The wonders were revealed to him – but so were the horrors; for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad.

As something dark and deadly takes to the skies over Harrington Falls, Jake Caruso and his friends, Sam Travers and Katelynn Riley, find themselves drawn into a primeval conflict set in motion centuries before. When fresh blood is spilled and the death toll mounts, these three friends will find themselves faced with a terror beyond imagination, one that will require every vestige of their strength, faith, and determination to confront.

The end of the world has come not with a bang or a whimper, but with the guttural snarl of walking corpses hungry for human flesh. The "lucky" survivors flee an unstoppable virus spreading death and societal collapse across the globe. As the rules of civilization crumble, a lawyer, a pilot, and a nurse become comrades-in-arms in the fight against extinction. But not every enemy wears a rotting face, and anyone who doesn’t have your back just might have your head. Humankind’s twilight is at hand, and these are indeed... dark days.

Timothy was not a good man in life, and being undead did little to improve his disposition. Find out what a man trapped in his own mind will do to survive when he wakes up to find himself a zombie controlled by a self-aware virus.

Ever since her sister became a man-eating spider and slaughtered her way through town, nineteen-year-old Ness has been terrified—terrified of some other Nightmare murdering her, and terrified of ending up like her sister. Because in Newham, the city that never sleeps, dreaming means waking up as your worst fear.

Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so it’s not a total coincidence that she took the job cleaning house for movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding graystone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his career making films that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.

Something very strange is happening in LeHorn's Hollow. Eerie, piping music is heard late at night, and mysterious fires have been spotted deep in the woods. Women are vanishing without a trace overnight, leaving behind husbands and families. When up-and-coming novelist Adam Senft stumbles upon an unearthly scene, it plunges him and the entire town into an ancient nightmare. Folks say the woods in LeHorn's Hollow are haunted, but what waits there is far worse than any ghost.

Fifteen-year-old Leo is watching the world crumble. His father is missing, and his mother is slipping into madness as she cares for Leo, his sick sister Goldfish, and two useless brothers. Relatives are no help, and the church folk have turned their backs in the midst of the Great Depression.

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who - and what - he’s become. As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. They’re pieces on a board, being orchestrated by someone...or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet - those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer.

Jack Bennett is confronted with this horrific truth when his life is destroyed. With nothing left to live for, he joins a mysterious group who have pledged their lives to fight the darkness.

Night Visions: At The Crossroad presents eight tales of horror and dark fantasy by Richard Laymon, Chet Williamson, and Gary Brandner. Prepare to enter a world where your darkest nightmare can become a chilling reality...A world of Night Visions.