Out of Dreams: Nightmares

Most years I do a little more for Halloween than I've done this year. I have been busy writing, though, and some good things should start to show up pretty soon. In the meantime, I wanted to take Halloween to make an official announcement of the publication of Out of Dreams: Nightmares, a collection of short stories based upon the weird dreams I've had over the years. 

This has been out for a little while now but I haven't really promoted it. There was going to be a post from another blogger that was going to kick this off but they seem to have disappeared from the scene for the moment. I didn't want to wait longer. 

Some of these stories have been published elsewhere but not previously collected. Others are brand new to this publication. There's also a lengthy essay toward the end of the book on how to use dreams to enhance creativity. It's something I've given presentations on before but I've never written it up for publication before. 

Out of Dreams: Nightmares is available in print and ebook on Amazon. The print version is only $6.00, which is pretty cheap these days. The kindle version is $2.99. I hope you'll check it out. 

The Frights of Halloween

Shadows do not remain in their places. Tonight.

Leaves crackle, and you ask yourself what strange feet are treading them under.

The wind moves in the trees and around the eaves of the house. Why does it sound like voices? And what are they saying?

In the summer, a cool breeze is a friend. On Halloween, it is something else.

What lies beneath all those costumes? Are they really children? From what parents?

The moon has been staring at you for a long time. You begin to wonder why.

Why are all the cobwebs empty? Where have the spiders gathered? Is it someplace close by?

None of the movies you watch on Halloween are true. Are they?

Why is it on Halloween, when you finally go to bed, you hear sounds in the house you never heard before? Where have they been hiding?

Was the door to that closet closed the last time you looked?

Could the wind be alive? Could a house be alive? What if they are? And what if they are friends and don’t like you very much?

But now forget all these silly thoughts and questions. Why don’t you have a nice, hot, relaxing shower. What could possibly go wrong?

Have a happy Halloween!

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A Halloween Dream

Had a very strange dream last night. In some dreams I’m one person all the way through. In others, I’m observing from above as an omniscient presence. But in last night’s dream I “head-hopped,” moving from person to person depending on the scene.

The dream began on an oil exploration ship. Our team had brought aboard a slimy substance dredged from the ocean’s bottom and we had it in a glass case that looked a bit like a crystal coffin. I was one of several scientists gathered around the case as another scientist showed us how the slime moved when shocked.

At one point, the scientist sent a surge of electricity through the slime and it suddenly began to grow and started sloshing back and forth in the case much like those old wave machines used to. We all panicked and started backing away when suddenly the slime darkened dramatically and thickened into a throbbing chrysalis. In the next instant the chrysalis burst open to reveal, very anti-climactically, a chimpanzee.

The dream switched ahead in time then and I found myself in a rec room on the ship. I was reading a newspaper while two other men played cards. The chimp was wandering around in the room and I understood that tests had revealed him as nothing more than a normal chimp. For that reason he’d been freed of his case. I heard a sound and looked up to see the chimp suddenly attack the two other men and begin tearing at them. Blood sprayed; the men began screaming; I jumped up and ran for the door.

That’s when I began head-hopping. First I was back in the lab where the slime remaining in the glass case started to bubble and birth black blobs of some tarry substance. These broke open to reveal all kinds of apes. There were chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, but they were distorted, looking more human in the shapes of their skulls but with long arms ending in massive slashing claws. They smashed through the glass and I was swarmed under as I tried to flee.

I switched into another man’s head who was running from some howling apes. He dodged through a door ahead of his pursuers and reached the rail of the ship. There was nowhere else to go so he (I) hurled himself over the rail into a bright blue sea. As soon as I hit the water I switched into the head of a man hiding behind a white counter with two others. Apes burst through the door and began searching the room. One guy tried a peek over the counter and the apes saw him and attacked us.

I fled down a hallway and out a back door and slammed it against the apes. I tore off down a corridor toward what I knew was the bow of the ship. I passed another man running the other way and realized there was no safety in that direction. A large, glass-windowed room was to my left and I pulled open the door there and rushed in, thinking to hide among the machinery in the room. But an orangutan loping down the corridor after the other guy saw me through the windows and came after me.

I saw a metal mesh door that opened into some kind of small control room and ran over to it. The door was opened slightly and it took almost all my strength to get it open and get inside. I started pulling it shut just as the orang burst through the outer door into the room I’d just left.

There was a bolt that locked the metal mesh door and I started to slide it forward with the orang coming toward me. But it was very heavy and I struggled, knowing I had only seconds to work. I almost had it in the lock slot when the orang smashed into the metal mesh from the other side. Hot spittle exploded over my face and chest and I could hear an incredible howling from the creature’s wide open mouth. The bolt was touching the lock when the orang’s fingers came through the mesh and grabbed it. We strained against each other, me trying to close it, he trying to force it back to get in at me. At the instant I knew the beast was going to win I woke up.

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NEW Halloween Horror News and Links:

A bit of cool news. L. A. Mitchell did a flash piece called “Home” for Halloween Horror October and won second place in a contest with that same piece. Check out the post here.

Laughingwolf has another freaky flash up: Chance

Vesper has a story up called Fortune

Will Kinshella has entered the fray with his own Halloween Flash

And Avery Debow adds another flash with The Love of the Job

And another from Laughingwolf, who would get an award for most prolific halloween flash fictioneer if I had thought about making such an award. See rider


OLDER Halloween Horror Links:

Flash Fictions

Hell Plate by Lucas Pederson.

freaky flash IX, night, by Laughingwolf.

lobo, also by Laughingwolf.

Non-fiction

Barbara Martin has been running some posts on her blog about horror films. Today she has a piece on Dracula.

Travis has a great true story on his blog called Ghost. Well worth checking out.

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Various Halloween Type Things

The new Shantytown Anomaly is out for Halloween. There are a couple of my horror haiku in it, and our own Greg Schwartz has a piece in it as well.

I’ve been enjoying the spate of horror movies that always show on TV around this time of year. One of my favorites is John Carpenter’s The Thing. I’ve seen it many times by now. Alien is another great one. I think of it more as horror than SF. Predator is the same kind of movie for me. One of the things that all three of these movies have in common is that they take a small group of people and isolate them in hostile environments—outer space, arctic cold, and the jungle. The first two achieve the greatest amount of isolation and are, accordingly, the most powerful.

A movie that achieves a notable degree of isolation despite taking place in a populated setting is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both the original and the first remake. In some ways, the isolation is even greater because the small band of normals are surrounded by other people but have no idea who they can trust. The Thing capitalized on this sense of paranoia as well.

I used the small, isolated band idea in Cold in the Light. I’d like to revisit it in a future book. Isolation is important in horror. The hero or heroes need to be stripped bare of defenses and support. They have to stand on their own. And if the heroes can be turned against each other, even better.

I’ll have another Halloween Horror Flash up in a day or so. In the meantime, we have more flash fiction offerings from our colleagues in the blogosphere. The newest ones are below, along with some nonfiction links, but check my post from Wednesday, October 15 if you still haven’t read the older ones.

Trick or Treat by Mark C. Durfee.

Inspire by JR.

Loop by Donnetta Lee. This is a micro flash in 55 words.

analine by Laughingwolf.

Chocophobia by Writtenwyrd.

Investigating a Mysterious Ending by Travis.

And for a longer piece, but definitely a nasty one, see Little Friends by Ferrel D. Moore.

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And for those of you looking for markets for horror fiction, check out:
Marketing Horror, put up by Writtenwyrd.

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Who Are You Anyway?

I walk pretty frequently in my neighborhood and generally avoid houses where I can. That’s not always possible, however, and today I walked further than usual because of the nice weather and passed a house where a boy of 7 or 8 and a girl of 4 or 5 were playing. The boy came running toward me as I approached but I tried merely to nod at him and continue on my way at a fairly fast pace. There would have been a time when I might have stopped to chat. But that time is not now.

The girl followed her brother, and made sure to inform me that he was her brother. I said, “your brother, huh. That’s nice.” I still kept walking, moving over to the far side of the gravel road as far away as possible, and tried to do nothing to encourage them to come closer. But I didn’t want to growl at them like some ogre.

The little girl turned and started running along beside me, along the side of the road, and asked: “Who are you anyway?” I replied, “Oh, my name is Charles and I’m just getting a little exercise.”

I heard the mother come outside then—I was almost past the house—and imagine she’d heard my voice. She snapped at the children, particularly her daughter, to “get over here.” The little girl asked her mother “why,” then said, “he was talking to me.” I thought to myself, I’d rather you not say that, little girl. I might get shot for something like that.

I almost stopped to explain to the mother who I was and try to reassure her that I’m just a harmless guy with long hair. But then I thought, what if she finds that suspicious? In the end I just kept going.

I’m proud of that mother for coming outside, for intervening. She did her job. I just wish it wasn’t her job. I wish she didn’t have to be suspicious of a fellow out for an evening stroll in the nice fall weather. I’d rather not be thought of as the bogie man. Even if it is almost Halloween.