In That Endlessness, Our End

by Gemma Files, Jesse Peper (Other), Jon Padgett (Editor)

Overview

Winner of the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

COME CLOSER, FRIEND. LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.

Heard the one about the Airbnb that eats your dreams or the iron-crowned king who preys on his own bloodline from the air, still smoldering centuries after being burnt alive? How about the cloudy antique bottle you can wish your excess rage inside, or that crooked alley down which something waits to replace your disappointing child with a far more pleasant facsimile? We all know the truth, especially in times like these-in an anxiety-ridden, sleepless world such as ours, it's only ever our very worst dreams that come true. Here streets empty out and people pull themselves apart like amoebas, breeding murderous doppelgangers from their own flesh; houses haunt, ideas possess and a cold and alien moon stares down, whispering that it's time to spawn. New myths rise and ancient evils descend. From the seemingly mundane terrors of a city just like yours to all the most dark and distant places of a truly terrible universe, nothing is as it seems...not even that dimly-recalled cinematic memory you've been chasing all these years, the one you think might be just something you stumbled upon while flipping through channels after midnight. The one that still disturbs you enough to raise a cold sweat all over your body, whenever you try to will its details clear.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award-winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares-a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578759760
Publisher:	Grimscribe Press
Publication date:	02/15/2021
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	409,957
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work, two chapbooks of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won a Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and a Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). She has two new story collections from Trepidatio (Spectral Evidence and Drawn Up From Deep Places), one upcoming from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better), and a new poetry collection from Aqueduct Press (Invocabulary).

Jon Padgett is a professional-though lapsed-ventriloquist who lives in New Orleans with his spouse, their daughter, and a rescue dog and cat. He is the Co-Editor-In-Chief of Vastarien, a source of critical study and creative response to the work of Thomas Ligotti. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Grimscribe Press.

Table of Contents

This is How It Goes

Bulb

The Puppet Motel

Come Closer

Cut Frame

Sleep Hygiene

Always After Three

Thin Cold Hands

Venio

Look Up

The Church in the Mountains

Distant Dark Places

Worm Moon

Halloo

Cuckoo

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/02/2020

This electrifying collection of 15 horror shorts from Files (Spectral Evidence) seeks out the hidden pockets of terror in everyday life. In “Bulb,” a woman encounters an eldritch creature in the wiring of her condo, while in “Always after Three” a couple are tormented by strange music and smells emanating from a neighboring apartment. A group of writers summon an otherworldly entity while doing a writing exercise in “Venio.” “The Puppet Motel,” one of the standouts, follows a woman as she grows increasingly troubled by the unsettling atmosphere of an Airbnb she runs. And in “Sleep Hygiene,” perhaps the collection’s grimmest entry, a woman haunted by nightmares consults a sleep therapist who has suspicious motives. Files maintains a sense of dread throughout with taut, unflinching prose sprinkled with touches of gore. Files’s monsters peer out from the periphery of reality, creating a sense of lurking horror and existential dread. This atmospheric collection will have even the most seasoned horror readers considering sleeping with the lights on. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

This electrifying collection of 15 horror shorts from Files (Spectral Evidence) seeks out the hidden pockets of terror in everyday life... Files maintains a sense of dread throughout with taut, unflinching prose sprinkled with touches of gore. Files's monsters peer out from the periphery of reality, creating a sense of lurking horror and existential dread. This atmospheric collection will have even the most seasoned horror readers considering sleeping with the lights on.

--Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review

From the Publisher

Guaranteed to please every variety of horror fan…One stand-out in Files’s writing is her incredible diversity, both in character and in style; it is refreshing to read about the different types of people and relationships represented.”

Booklist

There was Shirley Jackson, there is Stephen King and now there is Gemma Files.”

More2Read.com

This electrifying collection of fifteen horror shorts from Files seeks out the hidden pockets of terror in everyday life…Files maintains a sense of dread throughout with taut, unflinching prose sprinkled with touches of gore. Files’s monsters peer out from the periphery of reality, creating a sense of lurking horror and existential dread. This atmospheric collection will have even the most seasoned horror readers considering sleeping with the lights on.”

Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)