Category Archives: Short Fiction

Stones

Stone

It is best to know an areas local superstitions before wandering about exploring.

Andrew Richardson lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife, son, and a hamster. When not writing or working as a science administrator Andrew visits historical sites, watches his favourite football team, and takes long walks over rugged countryside. His lifelong interests of horror fiction and history often combine to provide inspiration for his writing, which includes three novels and several shorter pieces. For more on Andrew http://andrewjrichardson.blogspot.co.uk/

 

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The Grave

Alone I walked solemn

along the gravel paths

in the bleak shadows of the graves

when I saw an entourage dressed in black

with a coffin of finest oak

Who is buried in this late hour

so secretly laid to rest

in the most distant corner

in the field of death?

When I reached the open grave

the night laid still and desolate

curious I sneaked to the edge

and gazed surprised down

in the open empty coffin

when I felt a hard push

and fell headlong

in the soft velvet death

In the suffocating dark

I could hear

ashes to ashes

and earth to earth

that fell on my lid

and my brother and my fiancé

laughing as ravens from hell

 


Beneath the Eclipse

Cemetery at night

Some dark nights of the year, terrible things like to lurk through cemeteries looking for something to eat.

Erin Cole is a dark fiction writer from Portland, OR with stories appearing in over 50 print and electronic publications, including Dark EclipseEschatology, Aoife’s Kiss, Every Day Fiction, and more.  She is the author of the mystery novel Grave Echoes and the horror anthology collection Of the Night.  See more of her work at www.erincolewrites.com

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Return Fair

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark is a poet and horror novelist from London, England. His works include over fifty poems and stories published in various e-zines, anthologies, and magazines since his return as a storyteller in 2010. He is the founder of Horrified Press (horrifiedpress.wordpress.com), and hopes to help publicise some of the great new stars working in modern horror today.

 

Return Fair

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark

Carried along on an excrement’s flume, the corpse of dear William left its tomb,
floating away by a tributary stance, to be righted once more and regain a lost stance.

Hitting the crest of a sewer built wave, without ticking pulse or a heartbeat to save,
last rights of passage dissolved in the hume, of a thick oozing liquid, his bones to consume.

Slipped from the graveyard, then stolen away, the earth was found willing to give William his day.
A chemical sludge from pipe fractured nearby, that had hole in its tunnel for a gentleman’s eye,

found worms passage teeming from a miscreant deed, as a cellular wriggled collective agreed,
the unjust of internments need turn on its head, so a constable’s murder could be forgotten instead.

Moulded in structure, yet weak from decay, three hundred years of mystery began to melt away,
until a fusion’s symphony, unnatural in its end, rose up the banished legacy of an England to defend.

Surveying self most vigorously, a thief taker replaced, arms and legs peculiar, from grotesque feet  embraced,

William rose to greet the dawn, for the bell tower ring of his penitence cried. “I am fairly returned,” he remembered, “for no longer have I died.”


The Home on Hunter’s Lane

They wept: — memories staggered down the passageway.
Brought home through the torrents of scalding rain, they fled.
Paths of life dreamt; forever denied an angels mercy.
Forgotten, dispossessed, banished within our realm,
the spirit resisted the lures of life, be gone it whispered.

Twins flames of anger shone forth from the windows of that lonely home.
In the midnight hour, the soul’s pain shone in retrospective virulence.
Hatred for the living smelted the flesh, burnished the souls, which walked the lane.
Abandoned in the primordial depths, they despised the wicked living,
A living death, a seeker of flesh, it waited, it craved.

Emotional rot in its core, the beast of Hunter’s Lane resisted
the call to lay in its grave, come to me, it begged those without.
In the darkness of the window, it sought victims for play.
Withered from life’s destitution, the prey moved close.
A family’s wretched spirits gained a foothold within its lair.
The seeker concealed, spoke in dreams of murder and misdeed.

Darkness bloomed, shedding the light of eternal warmth,
as the malignancy cajoled the young one, join me it implored.
Forever unite with I; we shall explore deaths boundless light.
Within the home on Hunter’s Lane, she crept along those corridors.
While in her hand, the blade dripped with crimson nectar,
as the trail led from bed to bed.

Warmth fled as the steel turned red: — a soul’s death.
In the horrid expanse of her mind, desires of life rebelled; I am dead.
Her life of promise abandoned as she fled the shattered remains.
A corpse lay in the attic, her journey corrupted by the beast.
While along the lane, passerby’s whispered of the curse they bore.
The House on Hunter’s Lane: — a crypt for the dead.