Annie Neugebauer

Happy Halloween!!

For my last post of October, I’d like to round up what’s been going on around here for seasonal sharing and steer you toward my two most recent releases, which both happen to be fantastic books to read for Halloween.

It’s no secret that I love Edgar Allan Poe, so it’s probably no big surprise that I have a short story homage to him. “The Call of the House of Usher” is a modern story in Poe’s style that takes place generations after “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Our fateful narrator becomes haunted (stalked?) by a mysterious presence and is summoned to his ‘long lost family home’ to restore it. Things, of course, are rarely what they seem, and the past has a way of clinging.

First printed in a charity anthology that went to help save the Poe House in Baltimore, “The Call of the House of Usher” is also now reprinted in the all-women horror anthology Killing It Softly. Editor Suzie Lockhart and publisher Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. are billing it as “The Best by Women in Horror,” and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. Right now you can buy Killing It Softly in ebook for just $0.99 or in a big, beautiful paperback for $14.39. (Those who like neat book tricks will want the paperback; the header images do a cool flip-book effect as the pages go by.)

And I’m very excited to announce that Dark Hallows II is out now! This anthology put together by editor Mark Parker, published by Scarlet Galleon Publications, is bound to be a must-have.  With stories by Richard Chizmar, Lisa Morton, James Chambers, and 11 other talented writers, I can’t wait to get my hands on it myself! Right now you can buy Dark Hallows II in ebook for $8.99 or in paperback for $16.99.

My story “The Devil Take the Hindmost” has never been published before, and it’s a doozy. It’s the longest story I’ve ever sold and the most research I’ve ever done (short of my novels). Set in 16th-century Scotland, “The Devil Take the Hindmost” follows Hellen Guthrie after her mother is burned at the stake for witchcraft. When her cat brings Hellen a dangerous present, the neighbors turn their witch-hungry gaze upon her, her own family grows suspicious, and Hallowmass Eve — when the Devil’s dues are due — is fast approaching.

I hope you’ll consider buying one or both of these fantastic anthologies for some creepy reading. And in case you missed it, treats I’ve also shared this month:

• a free reprint of my poem “Fiend”
• a free audio reading of my flash piece “Hide” at Pseudopod
• a free reprint of my poem “The Shed”
• a partial video of the presentation I did for the Poetry Society of Texas, “The Poetry of Fear,” which includes readings of several of my horror poems: “Scarcely Caged,” “Naked,” and “To Walk Again“

Happy reading, watching, and listening. And happy, happy Halloween!

“The Shed” was first published in the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume III. ($2.99 for the ebook or $7.99 paperback.)

If you prefer to listen or want to read along, I really enjoyed Pete Mesling’s reading of “The Shed” on his show The Bare Knuckle Podcast! In this episode Pete reads a selection of several poems from this year’s Showcase. If you’re in a hurry, my poem starts at 16:50, but they’re all worth listening to. Listen above, read below — or both. Enjoy!

The Shed

The lawn lays wide
and bright with yellow
sunshine, spread flat
with no corners,

except the shed.

The shed’s paint is pale
but dull, as if the owners
who inherited it
thought the best
they could do was make it
“blend in.” And it does,
for a second

until your eyes catch
the black rectangle
of the haphazardly open doors
stuck in their tracks
gummed up with debris putrefied
to the same color of black,
jarring in all that wide bright.

And you try not to picture what lies in there
what things might collect and colonize in a structure
so low and squat,
but there you go picturing centipedes
and scorpions, spiders and weevils, snakes and rats,
and other, darker things that can’t be
– can’t possibly be in that shed – yet there
you go picturing them: tentacles from corners
and tall, pale men standing against the walls,
and chittering, creeping things that slide down off the ceiling and
open your doors  at night, when they can’t be seen,
but then, then, that’s not the most disturbing
part of that old shed.

The most disturbing part is how the structure itself seems sly and sentient with its thin metal walls propped like foldable gills, with its near-flat little roof peaking subtly like an eyebrow, how its rotted wood floors lie in panels, like they could all be rolled back like a tongue shoving food to the gullet, how that open rectangle of black at the doors sits still, patiently, waiting, and how eventually, when this moment of feverish imagination has regressed under the rightful armor of adulthood and you have nearly forgotten all about it (nearly),
you will have to go inside it.

© Annie Neugebauer, 2016.