Here’s wishing everyone a happy and spook-tacular Halloween!
Over at Pseudopod, everyone’s favorite horror podcast, H.V. Chao’s story “The Recovery†can be listened to in all the delectably macabre glory of George Hrab’s insinuating narration. The story first appeared (in a slightly different form) in Tartarus Press’ Strange Tales IV, edited by Rosalie Parker, which recently received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Here’s an excerpt:
These swaybacked houses shouldered upright by their neighbours, these towns time has brought to one knee, idyllic and sinister. How much they have seen. Leafing through a gilded history, I perused the account of a woman from the region, murdered and dismembered collectively at some ritual banquet of the town’s, the various parts buried each in different places. The stump of a foot filled the exact centre of a cornerstone. An elbow folded in a corbel, a hand weighting the mantel of a hearth, fingers distributed to individual bricks. The eye that watched from a keystone, and another blindly immured, untraceable but for a green weeping stain down the creamy stucco. A tibia, entrusted to the reliquary of a doorsill that Time has scooped out like a shallow basin.
If you liked it, leave a comment at the Pseudopod forums!