It’s that time of the year again, ghouls and gals. If you’re looking for something creepy to read during the month of October, check out my recommendations below. This should be just about everything from the horror genre that I’ve been able to chew through since I published the last list in October of 2017. I might have forgotten some, and there are a few I’m not listing because I thought they were pretty farty. Everything else you’re seeing is because I think it’s rad as fuck.

Enjoy. Or not. Whatever. Be that way.

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Some Will Not Sleep
By: Adam Nevill

https://www.amazon.com/Some-Will-Not-Sleep-Sel…/…/B01LBBQV7W

Adam Nevill is the guy who is probably most famous for writing The Ritual, which is now a movie on Netflix (although the book is WAY different and far better than the movie). Some Will Not Sleep is a compilation of scary short stories that, as you’ll discover very quickly, all possess the ability to make you feel really, really uncomfortable. Lots of people with doll hands. Yikes.

Flight or Fright
By: Stephen King, Bev Vincent

https://www.amazon.com/Flight-Fright-Stephen-K…/…/1587676796

This is another collection short horror stories, these ones flight themed, from authors like Stephen King, Joe Hill, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl (seriously), and Dan Simmons was a super fun read. I worked through a chunk of this one a flight from Boston to San Francisco, which made it all the creepier.

The Handyman
By: Bentley Little

https://www.amazon.com/Handyman-Bentley-Little/…/ref=sr_1_1…

I picked up Dominion by Bentley Little last year, and when I was finished, I realized I’d just discovered an author who had no fear about delving into some truly bizarre themes. I wanted more, so luckily I gave The Handyman a shot. Reader’s Digest version: A handyman makes his way across the country constructing dangerously built homes, and swindling the owners in the process. It gets very weird very fast. I really liked this one. I had zero fucking clue where it was going at any given moment.

Bad Man
By: Dathan Auerbach

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Man-Novel-Dathan-A…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Ban Man. Jesus, this was a doozy. A boy’s younger brother goes missing in their sleepy northern Florida town’s grocery store. Years later, the boy gets a third shift stocking job at the very same grocery store, where he quickly realizes shit isn’t, well…normal. If making you feel attached to characters was a musical instrument, Dathan Auerbach would be a fucking virtuoso on it. I still think about this ending months after I put it down.

The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe
By: Peter Clines

https://www.amazon.com/Eerie-Adventures-Lycan…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Written in the same antiquated style, the famous tale of Robinson Crusoe as re-imagined by one of my very favorite contemporary fiction authors (if you haven’t read The Fold, 14, or my very favorite, Paradox Bound, do so immediately). This time he’s a werewolf. No shit. Lots of interesting Lovecraftian tidbits strewn around this one too, if that’s your thing. It’s definitely my thing.

The Great God Pan and Other Weird Tales
By: Arthur Machen

https://www.amazon.com/Horror-Stories-Classic…/…/ref=sr_1_2…

Speaking of Lovecraft, this Welch dude inspired the old racist galoot to start writing in the first place. The Great God Pan is widely regarded by the masters of the genre as one the first emergence of what we know as “modern horror” for good reason. It’s really fucking good, as are the rest of the stories in this compendium. This guy invented existential dread. Required reading for any serious horror buffs.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All
By: Laird Barron

https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Thing-That-A…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

You’re going to see a lot of Laird Barron in this list, and probably every list going forward. Dude pumps out a ton of material, and this collection of horror stories is one of his very best. “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven” in particular blew my mind.

The Cabin at the End of the World
By: Paul Tremblay

https://www.amazon.com/Cabin-End-W…/…/0062679104/ref=sr_1_1…

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This fucking story, Jesus. I haven’t wanted to yell at the characters in a book like Sebastian in The Neverending Story more than I did with The Cabin at the End of the World. Two men and their adopted daughter are spending their summer at a cabin in rural New Hampshire when four people come trotting out of the woods with some very strange looking homemade weapons, and everything starts getting WEIRD.

The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
By: John Langan

https://www.amazon.com/Wide-Carnivorous-Other…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

In last year’s super spoopy book list, I could not stop polishing the knob of John Langan, more specifically The Fisherman, which remains one of my favorite horror novels of all time. The dude can write, and this collection of short stories carries with it the same level of “holy shit, how did this guy come up with this idea?” as his previous effort. The one about The Masque of the Red Death” is so good it makes me jealous as a writer. The struggle is real. This shares the top spot with a Nick Cutter novel I’ve mentioned toward the end.

The Outsider
By: Stephen King

https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Novel-Stephen…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Stephen King’s latest novel is good. Really good, and if you liked The Bill Hodges Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, etc.) at all, then you’re in for a fun little cameo surprise here. Kids are getting murdered in truly gristly, an unlikely suspect is taken into custody, and before long, you start to suspect somebody else is responsible for all of this gruesome shit.

The Imago Sequence
By: Laird Barron

https://www.amazon.com/Imago-Sequence-Other-S…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

I told you you’d see more Laird Barron before this was over. I’m pretty sure this is his first attempt at a collection of short stories, this one focusing more on occult themes. “Bulldozer”, my favorite story from this book, is about a hard-boiled Pinkerton investigator who unwittingly follows the facts somewhere nobody wants to end up. The mashup of horror and detective/spy themes was something I really enjoyed, and was only used to from Charles Stross’s “Laundry Files” series.

Blackwater: The Complete Saga
By: Michael McDowell

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_14…

This is a long book that takes you deep into the heart of the south of yesteryear. Perdido, Alabama, to be exact, where a young woman is discovered taking shelter from a flood in the top floors of a hotel in 1919. Once rescued, this woman becomes an invaluable fixture to the town and the people in it, but something about her is, well…off. McDowell paints a very vivid picture of a time and place I wasn’t super familiar with before this novel, and the amount of detail he injects into it helps to paint a picture so crisp you might as well be there watching it all play out firsthand. Well worth the 800 page investment.

Occultation and Other Stories
By: Laird Barron

https://www.amazon.com/Occultation-Other-Stor…/…/ref=sr_1_2…

OH HEY WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT MORE LAIRD BARRON. This guy is my spirit animal. Another collection of short horror stories. If I had to give you a theme, I’d say “regular people vs. monsters and gods and shit” sums this up. The story “The Lagerstatte” was a Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson nominee, which is a big deal.

Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy
By: Jeff VanderMeer

https://www.amazon.com/Area-Southern-Annihila…/…/ref=sr_1_5…

This trilogy is the source material for that movie Annihilation that everybody hated. The Southern Reach Trilogy, however, was really great to read, so don’t let Alex Garland wack-as-fuck adaptation stop you from digging in here. There’s ALL SORTS of creepy, crazy shit in the books that never gets used in the movie. Once you finish this, you’re going to yell at your TV for putting you through that Natalie Portman-fueled rainbow nightmare beforehand.

The Stone Man
By: Luke Smitherd

https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Man-Science-Fict…/…/ref=sr_1_2…

A giant stone statue shows up in the middle of a city center. Nobody knows where it came from. Then it starts walking, towards what, we have no clue. Nothing can stop its nightmare path through Europe; not buildings, not lakes, not mountains, not missiles. This is a crazy original idea from an author I’ve never heard of before, but I’m definitely stoked to read more from.

The End of the Story
By: Clark Ashton Smith

https://www.amazon.com/End-Story-Collected-Fa…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

If this guy’s name sounds familiar to you, it’s because he’s a fucking legend. Clark Ashton Smith was basically a celebrity in the horror/fantasy genre back in the day, and was good buddies with Robert E. Howard (the dude who created Conan), Lovecraft (yes, that Lovecraft), and Jack London (yes, that Jack London). His fiction is taught in schools all over the globe, and this collection is a great primer on all things Smith.

The Croning
By: Laird Barron

https://www.amazon.com/Croning-Lai…/…/159780231X/ref=sr_1_1…

HOLY FUCKADOODLEDOO, MORE LAIRD BARRON. I know, I know. What do you want from me? I’m a creature of habit, and when I find an author I like, I want to consume everything they’ve ever put out. The Croning is definitely my favorite compilation from Laird Barron. These intertwined tales all center on a mysterious, ancient entity known as “Old Leech”, who, you’ll never believe it, is not very nice. This one is my third favorite on this list.

The Ritual
By: Adam Nevill

https://www.amazon.com/Ritual-Adam…/…/0312641842/ref=sr_1_1…

Look, I know plenty of people who loved this movie, and I know a lot of people who disliked it. I even know a handful who were like “meh” about the whole thing. The book includes LOADS more stuff about the lore behind everything, the creepy weirdos who live in the woods, the main characters themselves, and about the monster, which makes way more sense in the book than in the movie. This is probably in my top three horror books of the year. Definitely #2 on this list.

Her Body and Other Parties
By: Carmen Maria Machado

https://www.amazon.com/Her-Body-Other-Parties…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Horror writing has long been a dude’s sport, and nobody makes that more clear than Carmen Maria Machado and her absolutely brilliant compilation of short stories that focus around women and women’s issues. It’s horrifying. It’s unsettling. It’s sexy. In some stories, you get the feeling it’s not entirely fiction. “Genre demolishing” comes to mind. So does “when does her next effort come out?” If the Law & Order: SVU themed story “Especially Heinous” doesn’t turn you on to Machado’s genius, you brain has been removed, and your skull has been refilled with some kind of idiot gruel.

After the End of the World
By: Jonathan L. Howard

https://www.amazon.com/After-End-World-Carter…/…/ref=sr_1_3…

This is the sequel to Carter & Lovecraft, a novel I put in last year’s spoopy list. I won’t go into too much detail about this one if you haven’t read the first book, but know that the juice of the sequel is well worth the squeeze when you’re ready. Lovecraftian alternate timeline stuff full of Communists and tentacles. The good stuff.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks
By: Jason Arnopp

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-J…/…/0316433039/ref=sr_1_1…

Shock journo Jack Sparks has built a career and a personal life out of being a total piece of shit. Once he starts investigating a bizarre YouTube video, all of that starts to crumble apart, leaving a frantic, self-deceptive man on the hunt for the truth behind it all. The inclusion of alternative viewpoints to Sparks’s belligerent, snarky point of view is a great touch you find yourself looking forward to throughout the novel.

The Changeling
By: Victor LaValle

https://www.amazon.com/Changeling-Novel-Victo…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

This slow-burning novel was something I almost gave up on about a third of the way through, and I’m really, REALLY glad I didn’t. Part social commentary, part modern fairy tale, part surrealistic horror narrative, The Changeling drags you the streets of New York City, to dark, forgotten places you really weren’t expecting to go. How this hasn’t been optioned into a movie is beyond me. I am the god Apollo. I am the god Apollo.

Paradox Bound
By: Peter Clines

https://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Bound-Peter-Cl…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Remember when I talked about Peter Clines a while back? You know, when we took at look at that crazy werewolf Robinson Crusoe book? That’s Peter Clines, and I think Paradox Bound is his best work yet. More science fiction than horror, Paradox Bound centers on a kid named Eli Teague, and the Revolutionary War costumed stranger in the Model A he keeps running into during certain parts of his boring, unfulfilling life in his go-nowhere town. Peter Clines does time / interdimensional travel concepts better than anyone these days. If that’s your thing, this is your thing. I’m chomping at the bit for a sequel to this one.

Strange Weather
By: Joe Hill

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Weather-Four-S…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Stephen King’s son Joe is a top-notch novelist all on his own (NOS4A2, Heart Shaped Box, Horns, etc.). Strange Weather, not to be confused with the 2016 movie starring Holly Hunter is his second short story compilation. Well, a collection of four novellas, really; each one pitting its protagonists against forces of nature that are pretty unnatural it you ask me. “Aloft” blew my fucking mind. “Loaded” hit way too close to home, and made me weep for the contemporary human condition.

What the Hell Did I Just Read
By: David Wong

https://www.amazon.com/What-Hell-Did-Just-Read/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Jason “David Wong” Pargin is the guy who once brought you Cracked.com, as well as John Dies at the End. What the Hell Did I Just Read is the third book in the John Dies at the End Series {the second one being This Book is Full of Spiders). Like After the End of the World, I’m not going to spoil the series by reviewing this one in any great depth. I think this is a spectacular way to end a much-loved trilogy, very much in line with the first two books, and I can’t wait to see what David dreams up next. The sauce is boss.

The Deep
By: Nick Cutter

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Novel-…/…/1501144839/ref=sr_1_2…

On last year’s list, I added The Troop and Little Heaven (my #1 pick) because Nick Cutter is a fucking horror dynamo. The Deep continues Cutter’s tend to create dark, seemingly hopeless worlds for his characters to suffer through. Synopsis: Everyone on Earth is dying from a disease that makes you forget everything; how to drive, eat, eventually how to breathe. There might be a cure, though; at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, where humans were never meant to go. Long story short, if it says Nick Cutter on the cover, it’s worth the price of admission. Out of this entire list, this is my shared #1 pick, along with The Wide Carnivorous Sky by John Langan.

I devised a telemarketing scheme when I was thirteen.

I went onto my friend’s computer, found a text-to-speech program. and wrote the following:

“Do you want to know the meaning of life? If so, mail a one dollar bill to [address redacted], and we will send you the meaning of life.”

My thinking was that people would pay for it no matter what. A dollar was such a throw away amount of money, and even if it wasn’t the “real” meaning of life, curiosity would force some people to stuff those envelopes, just to figure out what this snake oil salesman was shilling.

The address given in the script was to a house in Rye, New Hampshire that was in foreclosure and had head-high weeds growing in the yard.

My plan was to clean the mailbox out weekly, and keep the proceeds for myself without mailing anything back to my customers. If, in the off chance that somebody really complained about not getting the secret of life, I decided I would mail them a random page from the Bible to shut them up.

I wrote my script, converted it to robotic text voice using my friend’s program when he was asleep, and recorded it onto one of my mother’s micro-cassette recorders she used for her social work practice.

When I slept at my friend’s house in Rye, I sneaked out in the early morning hours and walked a mile down the road to a convenience store called the Hungry Horse, where I used the pay phone and dialed random numbers from a phone book. When people answered, I played the robotic voice from the recorder into the receiver:

“Do you want to know the meaning of life? If so, mail a one dollar bill to [address redacted], and we will send you the meaning of life.”

I did this for two weeks straight, until a police car flashed his spotlight on me, and I was forced to escape though a maze of fields, marshes, horse farms and a length of sopping wet swamp back to my friend’s house.

I left my muddy clothes outside by the garage, went to bed, and then rode my bike home before my friend woke up so he wouldn’t know about my foiled scheme.

I never checked that mailbox. Every now and again when I’m driving down to the beach, I’ll drive by the house, now occupied by a happy looking family, and wonder if they get random one dollar bills mailed to them, accompanied by notes begging them for the meaning of life.

The day started out as every other day has since I’ve been prescribed a heroic dose of antibiotics for a pair of ear infections; with me speedily tip-toeing to the closest toilet, and discharging something the color and consistency of highly pressurized hot chocolate into it. Despite my wife and I knowing “MAY CAUSE DIARRHEA DURING TREATMENT” is printed all over the bottle of horse-sized pills I dip into twice a day, I still do her the courtesy of running the faucet during my frequent bouts of expulsion, hoping against hope that the babbling stream will somehow mask the gruesome noises coming from behind the bathroom door. It does not work. In fact, I would go as far as to say the act of masking the bad thing almost serves to amplify it, like hanging a pine scented air freshener in a morgue during a rolling summer blackout. On the infinite spectrum of ways one can wake up, the past five mornings land somewhere between “house fire” and “rolling over to spoon your wife, only to find it’s a serial killer wearing her cleaved face like a dead skin mask.”

Not being one to let a little humiliation get in the way of having a good day, I sat down in my office, and buried myself in work. None of the software I use to manage accounts was functioning, forcing me to remember what I’d set them to the night before, and spend several hours recreating all of my work manually.

Needing a break from the computer, I decided I’d run some errands. I let the dog hop in the car to come along for the ride, and I stopped at the end of the driveway to check the mailbox before hitting the road. A giclée art print I’d ordered for my wife as a surprise had arrived. It had been folded six or seven times in order to fit into the small mailer it came in, making it completely unfit for framing. I tossed it and a handful of envelopes onto my passenger seat, noticed the look of frustration-nearing-rage creeping onto my face in the rear view mirror, and continued toward the main road.

Lowe’s was out of the metal flatbed carts one would typically use in the gardening section, forcing me to load a plastic shopping cart with approximately four-hundred pounds of pelletized lime, fertilizer, grass seed, natural insecticide, and a Scotts handheld broadcast spreader I’d had my eye on for a while. Having breached the maximum load weight for the cart, two out of four wheels seized, forcing me to angle my shoulders down and put all of my weight into shoving the cart across the store, through the register line, and all the way out into the parking lot, as if I was bulldozing a rack of blocking dummies for old white men with clipboards at the NFL Combine.

Once back at home, I got an email from my wife, telling me the $25 per month savings I was expecting to save on homeowners insurance after installing a security system turned out to be only $2.25 per month. After a few minutes of storming around the house and swearing at inanimate picture frames and window treatments, I responded.

“I’m going to take a lunch break for lo mein and green tea with Evan at that Chinese joint in Rochester.”

As I got out of my car at the restaurant, my watch strap broke; sending it crashing to the ground, where it joined my rationality, well being, happiness, and hopes for a bright future.

My spirits were mended after an hour spent with great friends and truly excellent spicy chicken lo mein, so when I got home, I decided “heck, why not get some of this lawn stuff taken care of before it gets dark.”

I pulled the Scotts Turf Builder 23-lb Broadcast Spreader (a $40.48 value) out of my car, loaded it up with pelletized lime, set the spreader dial appropriately, and began walking up and down my lawn, firing little pH balancing soil nuggets this way and that. The sun was warm on my face. A slight breeze rustled the tree tops as I went. All was right with the world again, and I was a truly reformed man. I giggled at how ridiculous I was for allowing myself to be upset over trivial things, like shopping carts, and diarrhea. I mean, life is so much more important than that, right? You just have to play through the pain, and that’s when things get better. It’s moments like these that really put the human condition into —

CLUNK

I looked down. The broadcast spreader wouldn’t move forward anymore. I checked around it, but didn’t see any roots, rocks or branches that could have impeded its path. I pushed it again. Nothing. Getting on my hands and knees, I discovered the problem — the plastic differential that connected the wheel axle to the spreader had snapped after ten minutes of use, rendering my brand new Scotts Turf Builder 23-lb Broadcast Spreader completely useless.

And that’s when I finally lost it.

I had no idea what to do with my rage, so I went ahead let my rage dictate the next several minutes without any input from me. I did a full lap around my property, speed walking and pumping my arms like a WWE wrestler walking down the aisle toward a steel cage match. I picked up a rock and I threw it into the woods as hard as I could. I kicked a tree. I made to scream, but not wanting to upset my neighbors, I tensed up my entire body, and let out a whisper-level, red-faced, close-fisted “fuuuuuuuuuuccckkkkkkkkk” that hissed through my clenched teeth like a tea kettle.

The insanity train only showed signs of slowing down as I was storming toward the broken spreader, realizing that hurling it into the stratosphere would only keep me from getting a refund, further sledgehammering my day into the bowels of perdition.

Conquered and broken, with the ghost of a not-yet-dead Kenny Rogers reminding me to “know when to fold ’em”, I walked inside, leaving the mangled plastic device in the yard as an artistic representation of the toll 4/17/2017 took on one Michael A. Boulerice.

“Tomorrow’ll be a better day”, I told myself as I tip-toed to the bathroom to expel the last ounce of dignity I had left to my name. “Yeah, tomorrow’s going to be alright. I can feel it.”

I was about to walk upstairs and put some clothes away, when I discovered that, in my haste to open every window in the house on an incredibly rare seventy-degree day in February, I’d accidentally opened a window without a screen. For most people this wouldn’t be a problem, but my special needs cat Charlie is forever housebound due to his abject inability to do normal cat things (read: he thinks my dog is his dad/mom/brother, and has once tried to nurse from his nipple), and in a town where long forgotten “HAVE YOU SEEN FLUFFY?” printouts are stapled to every ninth tree as sun bleached reminders of nature’s cruelty, he would not last an hour in the coyote-saturated wilderness surrounding my property.

Panicking, I scoured every room for Charlie, but couldn’t find him. I threw my headphones off, sending an Audible compilation of Robert E. Howard’s short stories clattering to my kitchen floor, and bolted outside as fast as my legs would allow, trudging through the knee deep snow and bellowing his name. Nothing.

Shortly after that, I began to lose my shit.

I thought of how upset it would make my wife if Charlie was gone forever; how awful it would be to come across his flattened little body on a random drive down the rural dirt road that leads to our house. My mind darted to a future scene in which we discussed how long we should wait before we adopt a new cat, because getting one too quickly would seem like an insult to the one we just buried. For a second I even thought “Oh man, I’m definitely not snowboarding this weekend“, and then instantly reprimanded myself for being so selfish. It’s weird how our reptilian brains shift attention from one benign topic to another during a crisis in an attempt to keep us doing whatever we need to do without seizing up from anxiety and fear.

*trudge trudge trudge* “CHAARRRRLIIEEEEE!!! COME HERE COO COO KITTY!!!” *trudge trudge trudge* “COME HERE, LITTLE BUDDY!!!” *trudge trudge trudge* “EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE OK!!!”

But was it?

There was no sign of Charlie anywhere, and the last vestiges of crucial daylight almost seemed to drain from the sky in double-time. Again with nature’s cruelty.

After thoroughly soaking my feet and jeans in the melting expanses of snow in my yard, I sprinted back inside to grab my dog Rodney, hoping the cat would maybe come for his milkless surrogate father, and found Charlie standing on the kitchen table, patiently staring at me as if I were some kind of sweaty palmed, over-reactionary alarmist, which I undoubtedly was, and am, and will most likely be forever.

I exhaled, gave Charlie a pat on his head, shook off my slush-laden sneakers, reached into the fridge for a cold beer, and finally closed this malicious asshole of a window that is clearly trying to tear my family apart.

We now have FOUR hour-long episodes of The Michael Boulerice Show podcast uploaded for your listening pleasure. My wife and Chuck and I are definitely having a blast with this new, completely unscripted project of ours, and despite our inexperience, we’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback. You can find it on iTunes, Google Play and Soundcloud (links below).

iTunes

Google Play

Soundcloud

The equipment is wired up. The levels are dialed in. The music has been composed. The candles are lit. The Riunite is on ice. My body is ready.

Episode one of The Michael Boulerice Show will be recorded this Sunday. If you own a business and/or are in charge of marketing for a business, and you’re looking for ways to promote it that aren’t totally boring, Write me at info@michaelboulerice.com for an ad rate sheet.

7:00 am this morning: A middle-aged man with long silver hair rolled down the driver’s side window of his equally silver Toyota Echo to talk to me. I pulled my headphones out and held them in the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Rodney’s leash.

I’ve been terrible with road directions my entire life, and I suffer a mild panic attack every time a stranger asks me for them. My brain just isn’t built to understand how maps work. I regularly get lost in the town I grew up in. Despite every fiber of my being wanting to divulge this fact to passers-by in need of help, I always stop and pretend I know what I’m talking about. I think I’m more afraid of someone thinking I’m retarded at first glance, than I am of attempting to give directions and actually proving I’m retarded. Nine times out of ten I can be useful. The tenth time, though? Not so much.

“Can you tell me how to get to Walker Bungalow?”

“I’m sorry, what was the name of that street again? I’ve never heard of it before.”

Speaking slowly as if I was wearing a helmet and bib, “Waaaaalker…Buuuungalooooow.”

“No, I have no idea, and I live in this neighborhood.”

*rolls eyes* “Alright, well how about Little Harbor Road? Sagamore? I’m trying to visit a yard sale.”

“Oh, I can get you to Sagamore. Take a left down this street, follow it to the end. Cross it and you’re on Sagamore.”

“So I take a left, go straight and then cross the street?”

“Yep.”

“Left, straight, cross.”

“…yeah.” This was becoming less of a friendly stop, and more of a police interrogation.

No thank you, nothing. The man rolled up his window and drove away. I muttered “weirdo” under my breath and continued my walk. As I rounded the corner, the man was parked in the middle of the road, with his window down once again.

Furiously, “GOD DAMN IT, THE BRIDGE IS OUT!!!”

Pangs of guilt and anxiety ran up and down my chest. In my rush to help the man as best as I could and get him away from me, I completely blanked out about the bridge reconstruction project taking place smack dab in the middle of the directions I just gave him. “Shit, I’m sorry. I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet. Here, what you want to do is — ”

The man shook his head in disapproval and rolled his eyes like a petulant child for the second time. Seeing this, my anxiety and frustration slowly twisted themselves into a coping mechanism braid of irrational anger. I stopped talking, and silently stared at him for several seconds. It was all I could do to make known my disapproval of his attitude, without telling him he should spend his garage sale money on a TomTom, and hurling a plastic grocery bag filled with Rodney’s steaming shit through his open window. I already felt bad for accidentally giving the guy bad directions, but his expressed entitlement to good directions threw me for a loop, and set my mind to its endless task of analyzing everyday situations that desperately don’t need analyzing.

[Where is this guy coming from? Why is he giving me grief first thing in the morning? How can someone be so angry this early in the day? What’s with the salt and pepper Jonathan Taylor Thomas haircut? Is this guy a serial killer who preys on early birds that fail his quizzes? What kind of garage sale starts at 7:00 am, and why would someone be in such a rush to get there? Is he some kind of American Pickers guy? Is this the white trash version of Indiana Jones? Is he going to replace a commemorative Elvis Presley dinette set with a sack of nickles, and pray he doesn’t get crushed by a giant boulder?]

The man registered the look on my face, took a deep breath, and then rolled his finger in the almost cinematic “keep it moving” gesture.

“…Go all the way down this street, take a right. Go straight until you hit Summer Street. Take a right, and Miller will be directly across the intersection. Miller becomes Sagamore. It’s kind of roundabout, but it will get you around the bridge work.”

“Jesus Christ.” The man rolled his window up one last time, reversed and chirped his tires as he accelerated in the direction he first approached, his parting “ASSHOLE!” salutation muffled by the whine of his 1.5 liter economy motor.

“Eh, you’re probably right about that one. Come on, Rodney. Let’s go home and get you some breakfast.”

*crinkle crinkle crinkle*

My eyes pried themselves open from a deeply satisfying and much needed sleep. The bedroom was pitch black, save for a ghostly blue hue in the windows that my groggy brain recognized as the harbinger of an autumn sunrise. “Late morning”, I half-grumbled, half-thought to myself as I listened in the darkness, wanting to determine if the noise was a part of the waking world, and not the dreaming one.

*crinkle crinkle crinkle*

There it was again, cutting through the silence of the wee hours of rural New Hampshire like a knife forged from raw obnoxiousness; even managing to slice its way through the series of running fans I’d set up as a deterrent before Jess and I crawled into bed that night.

*crinkle crinkle crinkle*

It was our cat Charlie, of course. I almost wished it was a four-hundred-pound serial killer holding a machete in one hand, and trying to open a foil Pop Tarts pouch with the other, because at least in that scenario there would be some kind of release from Charlie’s incessant nocturnal carousing after I’d been dismembered. But no, it was just Charlie. Again. Waking me up in the middle of the night for the third week straight. I checked my watch. 4:03 am.

*crinkle crinkle crinkle*

Charlie was suffering through his annual bout of frustrated depression that comes around every fall, when we have to finally close his favorite sitting windows in the house at night to keep the cold out. This was the fourth year we’ve had Charlie, and the fourth fall we’ve scrambled for ways to keep him from waking us up, including our poor dog Rodney, who is more often than not the victim of Charlie’s spiteful taunting once the lights go out this time of year.

Extended play time at night to tire him out? Nope. Melatonin laced treats before bed? Those only worked until he built up a tolerance to them. Not letting him in the bedroom? That would probably work, if we were willing to go to sleep with ear plugs in to keep the scratching from bothering us, and settle for a having bedroom door that looked like a family of panthers had been trying to make love to it, but that wasn’t reasonable. Nothing worked, really. In the end, we just suffered with dignity for a month or two, until Charlie settled into an agreeable lethargic winter mode. The end, however, was still weeks away.

I propped myself up on my elbows, and tried to make out what Charlie was chewing on. Something plastic, for sure. A wrapper? My eyes began to adjust to the darkness as I scanned it for movement, a hint of light glittering in a yellow eye, or off a discarded body soap package. Anything to help triangulate where the crinkling was coming from.

“Maybe I woke up at the tail end of it this time”, I thought as I waited for the noise again; silence once again flooding the bedroom, so total that I could hear my heart beating faintly in my ears, and the gentle breathing of my wife sleeping next to me.

I lay back down, allowed my eyes to close, and exhaled. The cat must have given up, and gone back to sleep. He —

*CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE*

I rifled the sheets off of myself as if the house were on fire, and made a beeline for the back of the bedroom. No cat, nothing. I managed to stub my toe on the FitBit bath scale I’d left back there, because I demanded it was too fancy to keep in the bathroom, like a normal, well-adjusted person would have insisted on. Not wanting to wake Jess up, I let out a pained groan through teeth clenched around a dental night guard, and tip-toed out of the bedroom.

*crinkle crinkle crinkle*

As soon as I was in the hallway, I could make out the outline of Charlie’s body in the darkness. I stalked toward the cat until I was a few feet away from him. He’d pulled the crinkly plastic packaging from Jess’s Halloween costume out of the bathroom trash, and had decided two hours before our alarm was due to go off was a great time to start gnawing on it. I ripped it away from him, and almost threw back into the trash, before realizing that he would most likely just fish it out once I’d gotten warm and comfortable in bed again, so I threw the packaging into the stand-up shower, where he couldn’t reach it.

I crawled back into bed, threw the blessedly still-warm sheets over my body, allowed my head to sink heavily into my pillow, closed my eyes, and listened to my breathing get slower, and slower, and slower.

***

***

***

*crinkle*

The noise reached me, even in my drifting fugue state of consciousness, but I refused it. Like a wilfully ignorant adult unwilling to watch a news source that refuses to confirm their inherent biases, I decided the noise wasn’t a noise at all. It did not exist. It was only the ghost of a noise I’d killed just minutes prior, and it was just echoing through my mind a few more times before it went to its final resting place. That’s all.

*crinkle crinkle*

My bloodshot eyes flickered open once more, this time stinging with sleeplessness. I checked my watch again. 4:28 am. I turned over to look at my wife for confirmation that the noise I was hearing was real, but she was sleeping as soundly as Grandpa on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner. Sleeping easily and through anything is her mutant ability. If the X-Men were real, Professor X would recruit her, make her a pajama uniform, and rename her “Sleepy Jean Grey”. The responsibility of battle with our spiteful, defiant cat was going to be mine, and mine alone.

*CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR SLEEP CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE*

The sheets were cast off again, my feet hit the floor, and I was off to hunt for Charlie and his demonic instruments of torture. The hunt only lasted several seconds, as he was sitting right where I found him the first time; in the upstairs hallway. This time he had the crinkly cap wrapper for a bottle of Market Basket brand mouthwash I’d bought earlier that day between his paws. Again, it came from the bathroom trash. Again, I stole his toy from him, and threw it into the stand-up shower, along with the costume packaging. Charlie just stared at me, as if I was the meanest human being in the world. It was a stare that, if it had been delivered by a human boy, would have said “You’re not my real dad!”, and was almost always followed by the child scrambling up a set of stairs and slamming a door.

I plopped back into bed a little too hard, which was enough to jostle Jess out of cryogenic storage.

“What’s going on?”

“The cat.”

“Why are you playing with your phone?”

“I can’t sleep, babe. I’ve been trying to get Charlie to cut the shit for half an hour now.”

“You have a problem with that phone.”

“The phone isn’t the problem. The cat pulling things out of the trash and playing Blue Man Group with them at 4:00 am is the problem.”

“Ugh. Why don’t you just kick Rodney out? The dog was sleeping soundly on his bed on the floor of our bedroom.

“I’m not doing that.”

“Why not? The cat is only playing up here because the dog is up here. If you kick him out and shut the door, problem solved.”

This made all the sense in the world, and it was absolutely true. Charlie is obsessed with Rodney, and would not just follow him downstairs, but to the ends of the earth, to hell, and probably even to a Vietnamese cat meat processing facility. I could finally go back to sleep, and wake up refreshed. Jess’s logic was, as usual, infallible. It did not, however, trump the absurd sense of moral responsibility I project onto my pets.

“The dog didn’t do anything wrong. I’d feel bad kicking him out just because his brother is being an asshole.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“I know.”

With that, Jess turned around, and fell back to sleep almost instantly.

I put my phone back on the nightstand, crossed my hands over my chest, and stared through the skylight above my head at the rapidly lightening sky. Sunrise was imminent, and I was nowhere near being able to fall back asleep. After a few minutes, I checked my phone again. 5:03 am. I debated giving up on sleep altogether, crawling out of bed, and starting my work day an hour early, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That would mean Charlie won; that I was powerless to thwart my own cat’s bad behavior, and I couldn’t look people in the eye if I let a ten pound bag of furry hate get the best of a [redacted] pound bag of adult male human being.

No, I was going to stay in my bed until our respective alarms went off. That’s how you show Charlie his efforts were futile. That’s how you show Charlie you don’t negotiate with terrorists.

My eyes closed of their own volition. The rhythm of my breathing lulled my overactive brain into a state of serenity. My consciousness floated out of my skylight, and out through the trees, into the pre-dawn sky, and past the blackout curtains of reality.

***

***

***

*YELP!*

Rodney suddenly shot up, as if somebody lit a firecracker under his rear end. I bolted awake, my heart pounding. The dog panted and paced around in a circle, revealing a suddenly sleepy eyed Charlie, purring like a Harley Davidson, wanting to snuggle up to his unwilling brother after an exhausting night of wanton feline fuckery.

Without warning, Rodney jumped up on the bed, circled several times, and plopped down in the protection of my leg nook, shaking the entire bed with enough force to make Jess shift in her sleep. The cat remained on the floor out of sight, but circled around the footprint of the bed over and over again, like some kind of purring shark. Rodney looked nervously over the lip of the bed, keeping an eye on the pint sized bully below. I let loose a litany of whispered curse words that have no business being strung together in that particular order. My watch read 5:57 am.

I stared back up through the skylight once more, defeated. I was broken. The corpse of hope lay splayed in front of me. Charlie won. Charlie was always going to win.

***

The next thing I knew, overcast morning light was streaming through the bedroom windows, and I could hear Jess brushing her teeth in the bathroom. I picked up my phone, and realized it was 7:00 am. Despite Charlie’s best efforts, I’d accidentally managed to steal an hour of sleep for myself, which could hardly be construed as a victory, but at least it meant they day might be salvageable with some extra coffee and a well-placed power nap.

“Morning!” Jess walked into the bedroom in her pink bathrobe.

“Morning.”

“How are you feeling?”

“That cat is no longer allowed to sleep during the day”, I grumbled as I flicked through my news feeds for the morning headlines. “If I’m awake, he’s awake. If I catch him sleeping during the day, I’m dumping a glass of water on his head. I will Abu Ghraib the fuck out of him. Charlie will sleep through the night if it kills me…or him.”

Jess laughed, and continued getting ready for the day. I stumbled downstairs, and brought a cup of coffee into my office, ready to stitch together words as best as my sleep deprived brain would allow. After a while, I kissed Jess goodbye, and she whisked herself off to work.

I drank a second cup of coffee, and contemplated a third, before deciding a long shower would wake me up more efficiently, and without the hassle of heart palpitations. I walked upstairs, turned the shower on, and let it run for a while so it would get nice and hot. I then disrobed, opened the shower door, and stepped inside.

My foot made contact with the wet, slippery costume packaging, instantly sending me sprawling backwards in the shower. The shower handle slammed into my shoulder blade like a baseball bat (if you’re curious about what kind of noise that forces out of a person, it sounds a lot like “FUUUUNNHHHHGGHHHHH!!!”).

With the wind freshly knocked out of me, I crumpled to my knees on the shower floor, which managed to twist the shower handle all the way over to the “boil a potato” setting (if you’re curious about what kind of noise that forces out of a person, it sounds a lot like “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEFFFFFFFFFF!!!”).

I scrambled to turn the water off, and then spent the next minute panting for breath with my back aching; water dripping off of my scalded pink skin, and pattering onto the crinkly costume packaging beneath me.

I laughed; not the laugh of a good-natured man letting a bad experience wash off of him. It was the maniacal laugh of man on the verge of sleep deprived, pain amplified temporary insanity. It was the tortured cackle of a man who just internalized the futility of his existence.

Charlie won again. Charlie was always going to win.

Somebody asks me for an audiobook recommendation at least once a week, probably because everybody knows I’m a total junkie for them. I do plenty of physical reading as well, but when I’m in the car on a long drive, doing super mundane chores around the house, or throwing the Kong football for my collie 18,387 times until he’s tired, they’re perfect.

I figured Facebook would be a great place to list all of the books in my Audible library that I’ve listened to in 2016 so far, and a great time to list them as well with Halloween just around the corner, because almost all of them can be placed in the horror / science fiction / thriller genre. I love that shit.

Here they are, in order of oldest to most recently listened to:

***

Locke & Key, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (more like a radio play than an audiobook, but INCREDIBLE nonetheless. I’m relistening to this as we speak because my Audible credits don’t re-up until Sunday, and it’s that good)

John Dies at the End, by David Wong

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

Finders Keepers, by Stephen King

The Fold, by Peter Clines (This guy is going some really cool shit. Very science heavy, if you’re into that thing)

14, by Peter Clines

The Passage, by Justin Cronin (This is a great trilogy. Start with this one first)

The Twelve, by Justin Cronin

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy (Absolutely brutal. Will make you want to crawl into a dark corner with a bottle and denounce humanity forever)

The Annihilation Score, by Charles Stross (The Laundry Files is a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s like James Bond meets Lovecraft meets awkward British comedy. Also a little tech heavy.)

Hyperion, by Dan Simmons (The Hyperion Cantos was something I read when I was eleven or so, and I wanted to revisit it. Definitely more fantasy than anything else, but I’m very fond of it)

The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

Endymion, by Dan Simmons

The Rise of Endymion, by Dan Simmons

This Book is Full of Spiders, by David Wong

Lovecraft’s Monsters, by Ellen Datlow and Neil Gaiman (If you’ve ever read Lovecraft before, this compilation of short stories from assorted authors will stuff eldritch horrors up your butt, but in a good way)

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, by David Wong

Sacrament, by Clive Barker

On a Pale Horse, by Piers Anthony

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons (This one gave me the creeps in a way I haven’t felt since I was a kid, and I was scared of basically everything. Very Stand By Me and It-esque.)

The Winter People, by Jennifer McMahon (Rural Vermont spookiness)

A Winter Haunting, by Dan Simmons (Sequel to Summer of Night)

The Chimes, by Charles Dickens

The City of Mirrors, by Justin Cronin

End of Watch, by Stephen King

The Nightmare Stacks, by Charles Stross

A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay (This one is a total head fuck. Exorcism / possession type of material, but updated and awesome)

The Border, by Robert McCammon (Apocalyptic aliens shit)

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete first edition, by Joel Richards (a regrettable purchase)

Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch (Blew my god damned mind. Time travel paradox shit. I’ve recommended this to about a hundred people by now)

They Thirst, by Robert McCammon

The Elementals, by Michael McDowell (Creepy house haunting story)

The Last Tribe, by Brad Manuel (don’t get this one; awful. One of the only audiobooks I’ve ever returned)

Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk

Song of Kali, by Dan Simmons

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (Another head fuck. Is the author crazy? Is he sane? You’ll ask yourself this the entire time. This dude also wrote American Psycho.)

Burnt Offerings, by Robert Marasco (Haunted house in rural New York, reminiscent of The Shining and Amityville)

Speaks the Nightbird, Robert McCammon (Historical fiction based in colonial southeastern America. Ridiculously good.)

Here I am reading a chapter from The Adventures of KungFu Mike and the Magic Sunglasses at the anniversary event for Long Story Short, with the theme of “I’ll never do that again.”  I’ll get either better video or a higher-quality audio feed directly from the mic when it becomes available later on.