Summer Fiction

This post is a little shorter than usual, life got in the way today and as a result I am almost $300 poorer; but at least my Jeep starts now.

Anyway this post today is for my mother, who suggested I do something a little more Lovecraftian in nature. Mom, without you I wouldn't know what Lovecraftian meant nor would I be able to write about something as obtuse as true horror (not that I do it well enough, but....).

Without you, I'd probably be writing about angsty teenage vampires. (Oh, snap!)

Prompt No. 8: Dark




The woodlands are not to be trusted. The tombs of its shadows hide a menace far more insidious than the sweetest smelling honeysuckle. Daylight does not touch it, nor moonlight or rain. In the still halls of the wood it waits.


The brave have no strength against this foe and the spiritual buckle under its force. This creature, for lack of a better name to call it, is ancient and patient. There is no one in Dren who has seen it, no one ever sees it. No one even speculates on what form it might take. However, in the night, when the silence presses in, it can be heard.

Some say they have heard a noise like a great animal breathing, others have heard growling and snapping branches. An unlucky few have heard, in the dreadful hours of night, a scream, a bone chilling shriek. Those who have heard it say that it was the howl of a beast filled with rage and dread or, worse still, the cry of something void of any feeling, something… indifferent.

This thing, whatever it is, does not come out of the woodlands. The people of Dren feel a sort of tenuous safety in that fact, though it does not decrease the horror they feel when they hear it moving in the darkness just beyond the reach of light. There have been some, over the years, who have suggested drawing the monster out to see what it is that lurks in the woods, for then it would be known. After all, a thing seen is not as frightening as a thing unseen.

But those who have heard that soulless shriek in the dead of night shake their head solemnly; there are some things in this world that are better left unknown.

 
 
P.S. Yes, that is a reference to "Twilight." And yes,  I think it is horrible.