When the Creatures Call

Why Horror?

WHY HORROR?

People live enshrouded in ignorance, and they choose to do so. I’m writing the kind of story that reflects what I see, think, and feel when I look out the window here. The things that haunt us can be tiny things: a Web page, a voicemail message, an article in a newspaper…

I could write a story about a happy man selling happy flowers to a town full of happy people and it might be good, but I doubt I would enjoy writing it or find it spiritually or emotionally rewarding. I write from the gut. I hope people like it, but if they don’t… too bad.

ANDY RAUSCH, DENNIS ETCHISON, NEIL GAIMAN, KEALAN PATRICK BURKE, AND BENTLEY LITTLE

They search for me, hunt me out of my home,

like intrusive toddlers picking rocks

to dig up worms;

my fears are huge,

and when their fat fingers touch me

my only safety is to hole-up where it’s darker.

CLARK ROBERTS

PART 1

INTRODUCTION: THE BEAST BURKE

Booklist has hailed him as, “one of the most clever and original talents in contemporary horror.” I agree with Booklist. He is Kealan Patrick Burke, and he’s a beast of a writer. I think within the horror genre he’s got the best short story game in the past twenty-five years.

Nobody is more creative with their short stories.

Nobody is as original as Burke.

Nobody’s stories are as immersive.

Each time I read one of his collections I come across stories that leave me shaking my head, pondering how the hell the man even came up with the ideas let alone pulled them off in the short story format.

I’m not claiming the following stories of this section are on par with Kealan Patrick Burke. I will admit that they were written with his ability to immerse a reader into a fictional world within a handful of pages in mind.

I’m not certain my story “Best Day of Summer” would exist if not for Kealan Patrick Burke’s short story “The Barbed Lady Wants For Nothing,” which I’ve reread probably a dozen times if not more. Burke’s story has taken up a permanent residence in my mind, as it begs the following question—what really happens to all those missing people? Both Burke’s story and mine attempt to answer that question with supernatural occurrences, but beyond that they are completely unique from one another. I’ll tell you this, with “BDOS” I’m trying to gut-punch you. I want you to feel it at the end. I want you to feel winded like I have after reading a Kealan Patrick Burke story.

I started writing “Traditions Lost” for a Deadman’s Tome anthology titled Bikers vs. Zombies, but I didn’t complete the story in time. I hated the ending I’d written, and so I didn’t submit it. The story nagged at me for about a year before a proper conclusion came to mind. Kealan Patrick Burke has written a few collections revolving around seasons. His Autumn-themed collection Dead Leaves is an excellent study of the season we all look forward to and the pseudo-holiday we all love—Halloween. “Traditions Lost” is my Halloween story, and I strove to capture that crisp autumn air, that thrill of dressing up to trick-or-treat, and those feelings we associate with a dying year and moving on.

“The Headless Woman’s Woods” is one of the only stories I’ve written that I can’t recall where the initial idea sprouted from. I remember writing it, and more specifically I remember writing it after reading Currency of Souls. There is no connection between my story and that book other than my desire to write as detailed as Burke. I wish I had more to offer on the “THWW”, but I don’t.