(Male, 30’s)
I don’t remember the whole nightmare story, but I remember one awful scene involving a child vampire.
Categories
#358: Child Vampire
Month: June 2014
If I found myself cast in a remake of The Wolf Man
The Ann Arbor Book Festival resurrected its Street Fair, and Doktor Leech braved the blinding sunshine to haunt a table shared by fellow HWA members David Hayes and Ken MacGregor. Hayes, shown here arranging some of his many publications for sale, is perhaps even better known for his contributions to B-grade horror movies, as writer, producer and actor. Check out A Man called Nereus on the istore.
His “splatire” book series blends extreme horror with social commentary. Seriously, they’re smarter than they might first appear, although the covers themselves are pretty awesome. Cannibal Fat Camp
Ken MacGregor‘s first collection An Aberrant Mind
Doktor Leech sold the last few copies of last year’s anthology, 13 Quick Shivers: from Dailynightmare.com
We anticipate being back for Ann Arbor Book Festival 2015 armed with more books hot off the presses– and lots of sunscreen.
By Michael Cieslak
My name is Zed, and I’m a home haunter. I’ve been approached by the Head Nightmarian to discuss the ins and outs of turning your home and/or yard into something terrifying this October.
For those unfamiliar with the term, the home haunter dwells in the middle ground between person who puts up some decorations at Halloween and the Haunted Attractions which spring up around the end of September. The typical home haunt has detailed props, some of which may use light, sound, and pneumatics to achieve their scares. Some home haunts are large enough that the rival the professionals, drawing hundreds or even thousands of people a night.
If you are thinking “this guy is talking about Halloween already?” then this post might not be for you. Everyone else, read on.
Categories
Nightmare #357: Awful knowledge
(Female, 50’s) I had a dream so awful last night that I haven’t been able to think or talk about it without crying, but you asked me to write it down so here goes. The dream was about carrying around some awful knowledge.
I dreamed that my daughter died. She’s grown now and living quite far away. She had some health issues as a child, and in my dream she was very sick again, but none of us knew it. I don’t think she knew it either. And she died. I got a phone call that she was dead.
But we were in the middle of some big, stressful event. I don’t know what exactly, but it was some happening, some convention or presentation that we were preparing for and needed to accomplish.
So I didn’t tell anyone that she had died yet– because knowing didn’t matter. There was nothing that could be done, so I had to wait with my knowledge. I felt very sad and very lonely.
And I knew that I had a lot to do too, but I wasn’t ready to deal with that. I had to make arrangements to get her body home and make plans for what– a memorial? a funeral? I didn’t know. We’d never talked or made plans with her because it hadn’t occurred to me that she could die.
So I was leaving the house and I ran into a neighbor. The dream neighbor was not a real person, sort of a conglomeration of people I know. She was a stocky woman with two little girls running around while we were talking in the front yards. She asked me how I was doing and I had to lie and say fine. Then she asked about my daughter and how she was. Her girls were always talking about my daughter, they enjoyed her company so much and they missed her. Again, I had to lie and say she was fine. I had no idea how to keep going.
It’s not every day that a local horror fiction writer and colleague launches a new short story collection– but this Saturday is such a day.
Ken MacGregor will read from this just-released book, An Aberrant Mind
We first encountered Ken as member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers (GLAHW), a group of like-minded authors who share a love of horror, dark fiction, true crime and the like as well as a common goal of supporting local literacy efforts.
We also caught him in a short film which was part of the Three Corpse Circus Festival in 2013. He wrote, directed and starred in The Quirk and the Dead, a love story set in a post-apocalytic world that made us laugh, smile and cringe in quick succession.
From our perspective, Ken is an energetic, creative guy who brings flair, originality and style to whatever he does– so we expect his stories to delight, to surprise, to make us laugh or smile as well as scare us.
We’ll be there to mingle with the horror crowd and applaud the successful efforts of one of our own. Join us this Saturday at Bookbound; costumes optional.
(Male, 50’s) This happened at the end of a much longer dream. My partner and I were walking through a dark area, shadowy streets. There was some element of danger, too. We weren’t alone on these streets and it was late enough that the people around were up to no good but largely they ignored us. It was thrilling more than scary, rather fun. We strayed to an industrial area, cement buildings, some abandoned, that stood close enough to each other to make a maze of little roads, each barely wide enough for a truck to fit down. M partner wanted to turn back but I insisted we press on to the end of this alley. It opened up to a dark woods. We skirted the side of building. We passed a silent man who carried fishing gear, bound for a stream hidden somewhere in those woods.
Then we turned a corner and the wall of the factory building disappeared. It was a very dark market, busy with the commerce of death. Maybe a half dozen men, with ragged work clothes milled around the items, some buying some selling. There were at least three coffins, tiny ones. child coffins. Beautiful, hand assembled wood boxes. Antiques. But then how could they be antiques? Old coffins would be in graveyards, wouldn’t they? There was something unwholesome here, like maybe these coffins had been dug up. But I looked at them as if I was interested. The salesman said “You don’t want to put a child in these. They’d get used to being dead.” As if I would use a coffin for a cradle. I told him, “No, I have a special doll that I need to keep safe.” He nodded grimly, as if that was what these were good for, for some kind of black magic. But I was most interested in the metal grave liners. I’d never seen them before, just slightly larger than the coffins, thick rusted metal, industrial but grim, very grim. There’s only one way they could have gotten so rusty, so corroded.
I had the sense that no one walked away from this market without buying something. That if you were ever desperate enough to find this midnight sale, you paid whatever was asked for the item you needed. It was a compulsion, a craving, a need. No one simply browsed here.