Author: Sarah Elliott

Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: Hide Seek Find by Devlin Giroux

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

Hide

 

Champion. Talented. So good.

I was always good at hiding. So I was told. No seeker found me unless I let them. Up high is good, but plain sight is more fun. For best hiding, though, be small. Keep tiny and quiet. Even the best eyes overlook the small and silent.

Don’t gasp at the footsteps. Shallow breaths.

But always…always…keep eyes open. Eyes don’t make a sound.

Wait…do they reflect light?

Footstep.

Slow breath. Mouth open. Breathing through the nose might whistle.

It’ll be okay. Champion.

The only talent I ever had.

So good at hiding. Years of doing it.

 

Seek

 

She has to die for the whole to survive. Not my rules. Just the way of the modern world.

Things don’t change. Neither do people. Decades don’t matter.

Plague. She nestles it within her. Cherishes it and thinks it’s special. To be nurtured. Can’t be allowed to spread. It will seep in and corrupt the rest. Creeping, insidious. Disguised as new and bright. That’s how it hides. In plain sight.

Or seen as small and helpless. A victim.

Not a victim. An aggressive infection to be excised and burned away.

Glint of light.
 Time to cleanse. Cleanse and protect us.

 

 

Find

 

So loud. They bicker and stalk. They run through me like I’m a game. Why do they make so much noise?

“Please no!” she said, small and scared.

“Needs to happen,” he said, stern and resolved.

Over and over. They reset and begin again. He kills without remorse or passion. She returns brimming with hope for acceptance. Over. And. Over.

And it is the same. Same noise. Same ending. Always.

They hide. They seek.

This time, I find.

Found them. They don’t see me. Nothing left after. No sound. 

All still. All silent.

Gone.

Without them, I rest. I fade.

 

Devlin Giroux

Devlin Giroux is a horror writer with some forays into high fantasy. His short stories have been published in both print and digital media with stories chosen for, and adapted to, horror podcasts such as the No Sleep Podcast. His one-act plays have been produced through La Petite Morgue and Kraine Theatre in New York.

Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: Wicked Amber by Niko Lapidus

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

I.

 

It was amber that caused it. A yellow stone, formed of sap of a tree from a deep and dark forest. When the amber was found in Utah, nobody knew what it really was. But like true amber, it held something. Not an insect or leaf, but a presence. Something old and hateful, with hands that reached and eyes that stared. The amber seeped into the ground, and it seeped into minds. Told folks to do bad things. Flies eating people. People eating people. People eating themselves. The amber took them slow, like a tumor. All because of that amber.

 

II.

 

I ate the berries, just like we all did. It wasn’t my fault, what I did. I didn’t know. What I did to Ma and Pa and baby Paul, it wasn’t my fault. They would’ve been the same anyway ‘cause they ate the berries too. None of us knew. We had seen papers, heard what happened with that yellow stuff over in Utah. We even saw the odd yellow patches on the berries, but we were hungry. Baby Paul was weeping with hunger. So we ate them, and by the time we all knew, the amber made me eat them.

 

III.

 

They called my vessel amber, but I was more than that, more than they could ever imagine. I had fallen from the stars, dripping from the trunk of a squirming black tree beyond mortal comprehension. I saw the world of humanity, and it was ugly to my many staring eyes. In their infinite stupidity, they thought me just a mere stone. But soon they learned. With cities and minds ablaze, they learned the true power of the amber that held my will and flesh. I took them like they took me, with tumors and boils and their own rotting hands.

 

Niko Lapidus

I’m Niko Lapidus, a 14 year old fantasy and horror writer. I’m from Berkeley, CA, and currently working on my debut novel, Voidbreaker. I’m also a stand-up comedian, and you can check my work out on spotify.

Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: The Thing in the Attic by Marcus Field

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

The Daughter

 

Daddy says he killed it but he still locks the pulldown stairs. Mommy says it sleeps, dreaming of gobbling us up. Mommy’s mean when daddy’s drunk.

At night I hear the locks rattle. Something cries above my room. I think the attic must be cold and lonely in the winter. 

On Christmas Eve while daddy snores on the big chair I steal the key. I stand on a stepstool with a blanket and teddy bear. The locks fall away and the stairs come down.

Something in the darkness snuffs the air.

A shape lopes to the stairs.

Somewhere, mommy screams.

 

The Bride

 

It’s always there. A creak overhead. A scratch. A shifting shape behind the boarded up attic windows. From above, it follows my wife from room to room. My daughter thinks it’s a kitten, a puppy, or a lonely critter. My wife calls it Megory. When my wife was a little girl, it lived in her house and told her stories.

Once I beat Megory to death but it returned like a weed in a garden.

One Christmas Eve, I wake up to see my daughter disappear into the attic. 

Something in a wedding dress of shadows spills down the stairs.

 

The Bargain

 

“You’re comfortable with the history?”

“It’s a fair price. I do wish they were found.”

“Don’t we all?”

“They searched the whole house?”

“If they were here, we’d know.”

“And well, it’s a fair price. A house can have so many hiding places.”

“Indeed.”

“The police found the attic stairs down?

“Nothing there, of course.”

“Of course. And the basement?”

“No basement.”

“At least the daughter is fine. Poor thing. I noticed pest control across the street?”

“Rat problems in their attic, they think. You’ll want to trim back the trees but nothing to worry about.”

“It’s a fair price.”

 

 

Marcus Field

Marcus Field lives with his partner, son, and dog in Sacramento, CA, where he spends too much time doing math and not enough time writing.

Articles / Interviews

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An Interview With R. B. Wood on ‘Winter in the City’ and More!

Winter in the City

An interview with R. B. Wood

By Sarah Elliott

 

It feels like winter is coming. Long nights herald the chills: physical, psychological and perhaps emotional. For some, it may already be here. That time of hibernation. Time to retreat to the safety of the sofa and lose yourself in a book, choosing total immersion in the words of others. Winter in the City is the first anthology to be published by Ruadán books, run by R.B. Wood. Want to know more? Read on.

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Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: The Nightmare Bird by Jane Bryan

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

Dark Scavenger

 

A moonless night falls heavily across clustered rooftops. Wings beat shabby black feathers against its weight. A blue-black heart throbs perceptibly behind gore-mottled ribs as scabbed talons catch the roof-spine ridge that is the apex of a church. Time-tattered wings fold. A raucous caw tears the sky. Red eyes scan a dreaming village.

The first dream comes. 

Red eyes flare to a brilliance that dims the stars. A black tongue flits in pleasure within a cracked beak. A tapped mind nourishes a bottomless dark gullet. 

Dreams flow in succession. 

Dawn stains the horizon. The scavenger reluctantly departs from the banquet.

 

Dream Smoke

 

Valerian, mugwort, passionflower, chamomile. Dried, crumbled, and laced with extract from the blood-red plant that exists outside of man’s nomenclature. The apprentice’s eyes follow intently every measurement, every movement of the master’s hands, knowing the responsibility of the smoke will soon enough fall to him.

“The Nightmare Bird cannot overlook any dream,” the master speaks. “It is compelled to collect all it encounters.” The apprentice holds the pipe, watches the master pack its bowl.  “The smoke will bring the dreams that hold the Nightmare Bird to our village and shield the dreamers’ souls.”

The apprentice nods and swallows his fear.

 

The Nightmare Bird

 

The new moon hides, and my sanity slips. The stars bear down, biding time. Their malevolence is palpable, terrifying. The trees snicker at my fears from the dark. Do I trust my eyes full of profaned bodies of the fallen, or am I the fallen one?

The stray newcomer destroyed the pipe in reckless incredulity. Too few inhaled the smoke that brings the dreaming. No sleep to dream, no dream as offering, the Nightmare Bird has roosted in my mind.

Beyond the village, an unnatural avian cry rends the heavens like a chorus of countless screams.

The world is forfeit.

 

Jane Bryan

Jane Bryan was born and grew up (kind of). She is bipedal, omnivorous, and carbon-based. Her interests include speculative fiction, amateur phrenology, air sculpture, and sarcasm. She lives where her stuff is.

Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Beneath by Steven S. DeKnight and Michael Gaydos

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Beneath
Author: Steven S. DeKnight and Michael Gaydos
Genre: Supernatural Graphic Novels
Publisher: DeKnight Industries
Publication Date: 6th August, 2024

Synopsis: Deputy Sheriff Jess Delgado is tasked with transporting the sole survivor of a mysterious attack along the Texas-Mexico border to CoreCivil, a for-profit immigration detention center closing down due to wide-spread protests. Housing only a handful remaining detainees and manned by a skeleton crew of disgruntled guards, the detention center becomes a desperate battle ground when something otherworldly emerges from deep below the earth. Something that only fears the light. Deputy Delgado must pull together the guards and detainees – two groups that hate and fear each other – to survive the night. Or fall to the vengeance of the things that live beneath. 

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Articles / Interviews

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An interview with Chanan Beizer

Out of Clay and Mud, Comes Adam Circa 1580 – Back Again!

An interview with Chanan Beizer

By Sarah Elliott

 

What’s a Golem like you doing in a place like this? Don’t know what a Golem is? Then you’ve not read The Golem of Venice Beach! Get ready because following the cliffhanger of the first graphic novel, we return to Venice Beach. Why and how? Let’s chat with Chanan Beizer, the one who resurrected the golem for a whole new audience and who concludes this tale (for now) in The Golem of Venice Beach: Book 2 which is available on Kickstarter from September 12th, 2024.

 

Bio: Chanan Beizer has had a varied career including computer programming, film-making, and TV sports production. In 2018, Chanan’s script for The Golem of Venice Beach won the very first ScreenCraft Cinematic Book contest for graphic novels. For the past three years, Chanan has been working with Eisner-Award winning editor, Chris Stevens (Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream) to assemble a dream team of artistic collaborators to bring the story of the Golem to life.

 

This links perfectly to the first question…

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Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: The Threads of Ruin by Michael Adamas

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

I.

 

A black powder was falling from the sky. 

Terry stared at the precipitation in confusion; it was too warm for snow, and why would it be dirty this far from civilization? Her gaze turned toward a maple that was dusted with the substance.

The tree was dying before Terry’s eyes. Its leaves had gone brown and fallen. Pustules bubbled up under the bark, splitting it apart. Jumping back in shock, she saw the grove of pines behind her home decaying with the arrival of the terrible substance.

Terry crumpled to her knees, helpless, as the death came to her forest.

 

II.

 

Lucas squinted, trying to make out the approaching figures through the gloom. The boy was sheltered in the burnt remains of a house on what used to be a nice street. He adjusted his oxygen mask, letting out a muted cough. 

The figures drew closer. Raiders, searching for spoils in a land of poisoned earth. Three of them, and armed. They scattered like the vultures they were and picked greedily through the suburban ruins.

When he was sure that they wouldn’t see him, Lucas picked up the backpack he had loaded with supplies and slipped away, disappearing into the wasteland.

 

III.

 

The planet’s surface was littered with bones. Twisted, mutilated skeletons of trees stood among them, massive grave markers for the species lost. The biologists had seen the sight before on several worlds already.

The taller of the two scanned the soil with several instruments held in his many sets of arms. “Xymethian fungus, without a doubt,” he confirmed, waving his antennae wildly.

The second biologist opened communications with their ship. “Confirmed, the Plague has eradicated this world.”

They sadly entered the shuttle airlock. As the anti-fungal gas surrounded them, they prayed that next time, they would not be too late.

 

Michael Adamas

Michael Adamas was born in a barn and raised in a house. He spends long afternoons in the woods and creates art in his free time. He lives in Ohio.