“For life is a little matter,
And death is nought to the young;
And I dare not sell my honour
Under the eye of my son.
Take him, O king, and bind him,
And cast him far in the deep;
And it’s I will tell the secret
That I have sworn to keep.”–Robert Louis Stevenson (Heather Ale)
“Whimpering a little, with the hunger of a starved hound, he waited. He was a monster that nature had made, ready to obey nature’s first commandment: Thou shalt kill and eat. He was a thing of terror… a fable whispered around prehistoric cavern-fires… a miscegenation allied by later myth to the powers of hell and sorcery. But in no sense was he akin to those monsters beyond nature, the spawn of a new and blacker magic, who killed without hunger and without malevolence.”–Clark Ashton Smith (Monsters in the Night)
“Then down from the great red stars above, each like a misty plume,
There fell on my face long drops of blood and I knew at last my doom.”–Robert E. Howard (The Fear That Follows)
“And a Shape in the shadows wags its grisly head forever?
You swore by the blood-crust that stained your dagger,
By the haunted woods where hoofed feet swagger,
And under grisly burdens misshapen creatures stagger.
Up, John Kane, and cease your quaking!
You have made the pact which has no breaking,
And your brothers are eager their thirst to be slaking.
Up, John Kane! Why cringe there, and cower?
The pact was sealed with the dark blood-flower;
Glut now your fill in the werewolf ’s hour!”–Robert E. Howard (Up, John Kane!)
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be properly made.-Edgar Allan Poe (The Masque of the Red Death)
Excerpt from Stephen Sinclair’s “Billy Loved Old Books”
“I hear the roar of fire and the screams of a dying world. I smell the charring of burnt souls. I feel the icy chill of Death. I feel the heated blast of Hell.”–Brandon J Crookston (The Lore of Nocturnus)
“Farewell for awhile, Christophe. But have no fear. You shall find me again if you are brave and patient.”–Clark Ashton Smith (The End of the Story)
I stand chilled and alone in a desolate cane field next to a dead man. His neck is twisted and bent
at an unnatural angle. The yellowed waxen skin—rifled with wounds, of his throat and torso are
exposed. As I look on with a gust of a cold wind at my back, I notice chunks of flesh have been
torn from both. Maculations of crimson on leaves and the splatter of frozen blood surround his
body. But it’s the eyes of the man I’ll remember to my last days. Wide, fixed in shock, they hide
some terrifying secret only the mutilated corpse may know.–Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Curious Death of Dionysus Chennault)
Some of my nightmares screaming release are spiders devouring a team of researchers in an African cave; a scientist and his family slither into the swamp to encounter deadly snails; and a vampire’s curse lets the blood fly. Many more Hellish creatures are in that abyss waiting for their next victim. Conjured abominations that should never see the light of day.
Check out the collection on Amazon and Kindle. We pray “These Hallowed Horrors” keep you awake at night, looking under the bed…or over your shoulder in a moonlit forest or sea.
With these conjured verses we didn’t plan on jump scares or worn-out horror cliché. We wanted something that scares or unnerves…and different. Maybe we got it right this time. Or maybe it leaves a little something to grow on your mind down the road. As a werewolf bite, a nest of hungry spiders…or slithering slugs, in your brain.
And…as always, devilishly devoted to horror may your soul always be! -JL
“Poetry in the right, devilish hands…can be terrifying! “–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Horrors to Scorch Earth)
I had no weapon nor did I feel the need of any; a strong, athletic youth, I was in addition an amateur boxer of ability, with a terrific punch in either hand. Now all the primal instincts surged redly within me; I was a cave man bent on vengeance against a tribe who sought to steal a woman of my family. I did not fear–I only wished to close with them. Aye, I recognized these–I knew them of old and all the old wars rose and roared within the misty caverns of my soul. Hate leaped in me as in the old days when men of my blood came from the North. Aye, though the whole spawn of Hell rise up from those caverns which honeycomb the moors.–Robert E. Howard “The Little People”
“Couldn’t eat or drink a thing,” cried the other. ” Good Lord, don’t you see, man, I want to talk to someone first? I want to get it out of me to someone who can answer—answer. I’ve had nothing but trees to talk with for three days, and I can’t carry it alone any longer. Those cursed, silent trees—I’ve told it ’em a thousand times. Now, just see here, it was this way. When we started out from camp——”(Algernon Blackwood “Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp”
And each and every thing was transfigured in his vision, and in my vision—the vision he gave now to me—to the exquisite essence of itself. A wordless and eternal voice spoke from the starry veil of heaven, it sang in the wind that rushed through the broken timbers; it sighed in the flames that ate the sooted stones of the hearth.–Anne Rice (The Master of Rampling Gate)
“And how is it with your views of a future life?” inquired the speculative clergyman.
“Worse than with you,” said the old man, in a hollow and feeble tone; “for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear. Mine,—mine is the wretchedness! This cold heart,—this unreal life! Ah! it grows colder still.”
It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of the skeleton gave way, and the dry hones fell together in a heap, thus causing the dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon the table. The attention of the company being thus diverted for a single instant from Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on turning again towards him, that the old man had undergone a change. His shadow had ceased to flicker on the wall.–Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Christmas Banquet)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 