Body Horror

Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother's lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her.

After Ryan makes a horrifying discovery near the Red River, he is confronted by an unexpected guest. Was he followed? Unfortunately, the horrors only escalate from there. Perhaps little Tony Peterson's claim about the existence of an "ape-man" wasn't so farfetched after all.

This is a story from the The Body Snatcher and Other Stories collection.

Stanley Maddox lives a mundane life in a nondescript town. His wife is cheating on him, his colleagues at work don’t recognize him, and he has recently noticed a mysterious creature darting its way through his house. When he notices a flap of skin on his face, he begins pulling. Beneath his skin lies another person, an evil person, with the power to change his life forever.

Some connections are beautiful. Some are deadly. For thriller novelist Miranda Birky, strange yellow flowers appearing overnight in perfect geometric patterns across her lawn is just another bizarre small-town occurrence—until people who touch them begin to change. Miranda runs to her neighbor, biology teacher Alan Raasch, for help. They discover an unsettling truth: the yellow bloom isn’t just changing people—it’s connecting them into a vast living network with a consciousness and purpose of its own. With the military compromised, authorities infected, and “Make Earth Bloom Again...

After his first Holy Communion, a boy secretly builds his own Jesus out of communion wafers and the flesh of his dad. On Halloween night, his Jesus shall rise. After a tragic death, a girl tends to the Cemetery of the Innocents, a memorial to the holocaust of abortion and children killed before their time. On Halloween night, the children shall live, and they need to be fed.

Clancy Reynolds is about to propose to the woman of his dreams, but she dumps him for another man before he has the chance. Blinded by rage, he decides to take matters in his own hands. The plan ends in tragedy, and he's sent to a psychiatric hospital where his caretakers ask him to be part of a secret experiment. In exchange, he will have his freedom if he survives.

Horatio Nightingale, private eye, necromancer, pain in Detective Sergeant Jenn Amato’s backside, has a ghost problem. It’s driving him slowly insane. Perhaps the body in the museum will prove to be a suitable distraction.

Amy’s father has changed… Gone is the loving dad whose little girl was the center of his life, gone is the level headed parent who raised her. This new father’s enthusiasm for living borders on a manic depressive rage. He brags of a newfound verve for living, but instead of discovering life, he only seems intent on devouring it. Below his wildly smiling eyes and officious grins, exists a clenched jaw and brooding temper that threatens to engulf them both if he can’t have all of what he really wants: her.

The Body Artist begins with normality: breakfast between a married couple, Lauren and Rey, in their ramshackle rented house on the New England coast. Recording their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words, Don DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of our idiosyncratic relationships. But after breakfast, Rey makes a decision that leaves Lauren utterly alone, or seems to.

I grew up in a world of magic. By the time I was ten I understood nature, talked to the trees, and listened to the wind. When the kingdom of men conquered my town, I was murdered by one of my own - the betrayer of my kind. But I didn't stay dead. I woke to find myself in a strange new world called Los Angeles. The only keys to the life I remembered were my father's ring, my unique abilities, and the onslaught of demons that seemed hell-bent on finding me. Now I must learn who I really am, protect my friends, get the girl, and find my way back to my beloved hometown of Orenda.

The year is 2124. Earth’s first faster-than-light starship makes its maiden voyage into the unknown and disappears, only to be declared missing for the better part of two centuries. The ship’s historic first mission was supposed to be simple, just a test of the experimental displacement drive. The crew was supposed to spend seven days in the depths of space, then snap back to Earth to prove a concept, and nothing more. Instead, they find something impossible. They find something that draws them into a struggle against a horror of meat and metal fifty thousand years in the making. AS THE...

Scullery drudge Ann longs to become a lady's maid. Ann can't quite remember how or when she arrived at the grand Ropner Hall, but she loathes spending her days toiling in the dank kitchen. When a chance meeting with Ropner's Lady Charlotte leads to the opportunity to become her personal maid, Ann is convinced she has finally escaped her own version of hell. But has she?

Since the zombie invasion, the island of Manhattan has been turned into a wintery wasteland. The Zombie King has arrived in search of a mythical Opener. A human who can create a bridge to the land of the dead and unleash all its horrors on earth. But, who is the mysterious Giant, and why can no one get onto the island of Manhattan? Then we take a trip to the carnival and learn the origins of the Dead-Killer and why he wants the Zombie King dead forever. And finally, where does the Vamp get her tattoos? And why are they so important?

It’s been 18 months since the Raxter School for Girls was put in quarantine. The Tox turned the students strange and savage, the teachers died off one by one. Cut off from the mainland, the girls don’t dare wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure as the Tox takes, their bodies becoming sick and foreign, things bursting out of them, bits missing.

Something ancient stirs beneath Meadowvale. Something hungry. Wildlife biologist Stella Hartley returns to her hometown after a career-ending scandal, seeking the quiet life she once knew. What she finds instead are dead rabbits drained of blood. Then, the first human victim appears, and Stella discovers a horrifying truth: beneath her quiet hometown, an ancient hunger has awakened. Every hundred years, it transforms ordinary rabbits into blood-drinking killers that hunt with terrifying intelligence. As the creatures swarm the town and her childhood friend Vincent is bitten, Stella finds ...

Quick, punchy, and unpredictable—the same goes for the novella as it does for its titular protagonist, Chuck Masters. Chuck thought he was the next big gift to cinema, but he has proven himself a raging disappointment to the craft and to his family. Chuck is finally ready to claim his glorious return to the spotlight … in the worst hotel imaginable. Ghosts! Frights! Craft services! Enter the world of the Royal Eugenia Hotel, and watch a Master at work. It might just be his last.

Her life is overdue, and tonight she has to pay. Rachel Dankworth finds her name on a library due date card. The fine? Her entire existence. “You shouldn’t be alive,” the card whispers at midnight. “You stole someone else’s story.” Nineteen years ago, Rachel survived falling through ice when she should have died. Now the Emberwick Library has come to collect—with interest. Text crawls beneath her skin like living tattoos. Her body flickers transparent at the edges. She’s being erased, word by word, paragraph by paragraph. “You’re nineteen years overdue,” warns Dexter, ...

Ever since Margot was born, it's been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot's questions. No history to hold on to. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along. But that's not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And when she finds a photograph pointing her to a town called Phalene, she leaves. But when Margot gets there, it's not what she bargained for. Margot's mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what's still there?

A pair of casual paranormal researchers are experimenting with the idea of astral projection. One night, one of them inadvertently succeeds in projecting his spirit from his body, which is then taken possession of by a malevolent entity in his absence.