All Six Of This Year’s Halloween Stories

Happy Halloween 🙂 In case you missed any of this year’s Halloween stories, I thought that I’d collect a list of links to them. Still surprised that I wrote them this year. I hadn’t planned to… but I suddenly felt inspired to write six of them back in June.

Yes, they’re a weird mixture of stories – with a mixture of bizarre dystopian fiction, detective fiction, cynical satire and science fiction as well as the usual horror – but they were fun to write though 🙂 Anyway, enjoy 🙂

• “May The Secret Be Kept“: A dark, dystopian tale set in a world where the most popular worldview isn’t science or religion but is, instead, stage magic.
• “Quiet Ridge”: There isn’t much overlap between “Retro survival horror game fans” and “New age manifestors”… Well, most of the time.
• “Weekend Warriors”: A magazine journalist interviews two people who are prepping for a zombie apocalypse… but not in the way you might think.
• “Sui Generis”: Alisa loves A.I. and uses it for everything. Surely nothing cynical or terrible will happen to her in this joyous short story, written by an artist…
• “Profound Purple”: A giallo movie-style serial killer terrorises the people of West Portsea, but a stationery nerd thinks that he can crack the case…
• “Day Of The Balloons!”: Laura has got 99 problems, and those are just the red ones…

“Day Of The Balloons!” A Short Story By C. A. Brown

Stay tuned for a compilation post, containing links to all of this year’s stories, at 11pm (GMT) tonight 🙂

“Yeah, just chilling out. See you later” Laura put her phone down and returned to her laptop screen. The quiet pattering of afternoon rain filled her flat. Gary wouldn’t show up until six. There was enough time to watch a film, for a couple of multiplayer games, for a lengthy journalling session, for a walk around the block. For so, so many things. But she ended up watching a short internet video of a cat riding a little surfboard. It was probably harmless CGI. Probably. No-one in the comments could agree.

When she clicked back onto the site’s front page, she hadn’t expected the balloon videos.

Every one of the little thumbnails was filled with bright balloons. Giant montgolfiers soaring above rural hills in perfect formation. Cute balloon-dogs held by creepy clowns. Grainy VHS footage of a distant red cloud titled “The Tragedy Of Balloonfest ’86“. A frozen frame of a water balloon bursting in slow-motion, its orange skin splitting open in a single slash to reveal a perfect orb of crystal water.

“Well, at least it isn’t machine-guns“. Laura rolled her eyes. A week earlier, she’d accidentally clicked on the wrong video. Footage of a sweaty shirtless man in the Nevada desert brandishing a Vietnam-era M60. The sun’s reflection made his sunglasses glow like a demon’s eyes. His cackling laughter was quickly drowned out by the ear-splitting rat-tat-tat of ten bullets per second. Brass casings sparkled like a golden waterfall. The gun’s dark barrel spat and sputtered like an exhaust pipe. His teeth gleamed in the harsh sunlight. Before she could even think to click away, the video had already ended. Ten seconds. A hundred bullets.

When she’d gone back to the main page, there had been nothing but gun videos waiting for her. A bearded man in a red jacket holding a shiny revolver “Why you NEED a .44 Serpent for mansion defence!“. A portly man in military fatigues brandishing a grenade launcher “AM I ‘over-qualified’ for the security guard job?“. A bald man in an American flag T-shirt pointing a foot-long hand-cannon at a prosthetic skeleton encased in ballistic gel “Aim HERE to make the head explode (zombie apocalypse only 😉 )“.

It had taken Laura two hours of searching for other stuff for the thumbnails to even begin to disappear. Compared to all of that, the balloons weren’t so bad. But she had no clue where they came from. Probably some weird algorithm connection from the cat video. “People who watch surfing cats have an 83.6% chance of being balloon fanatics too” or something like that.

She refreshed the page. Amongst the bright pictures, there was one black square. “Necrotic Goat Disemboweller – Live London 30/10/23“.

Without even thinking, she clicked on it. It was shaky phone footage of a death metal band in a tiny venue. The stage lights dissolved into blue static, turning the band members into indistinct silhouettes. The guitars crunched and pounded. The lead vocals were an old record player hiss turned up to eleven. Still better than the balloons. She watched the video twice. It could do with more melodic elements, but it wasn’t exactly bad.

Before she could return to the main page, her bedroom window squeaked. She spun around without even thinking. A lime green balloon floated away into the dark grey expanse above. She let out a long sigh. No doubt that there was a crying child on the street below, staring mournfully into the sky. Too bad. We’ve all been there. She turned back to her laptop and opened the main page. The videos were back to normal again. A selection of iridescent obsidian squares, showing silhouetted musicians and beautiful lights.

She kept watching, jumping from video to video to pass the time. An Italian synth-wave band in a purple studio. A group of goths from Florida playing a pandemic show in an empty bar. A robot-skeleton that could play the electric guitar. A music video of a handsome televangelist having a wild night out on the town. A leather-clad lady from Germany playing Judas Priest covers. Phone footage of a new song from a rock band who hadn’t seen a recording studio since the ’90s.

Between videos, she heard more squeaking. There was nothing but grey outside the window. It could be anything. She checked the clock. It was only five ‘o clock. The squeaking got faster and louder. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bright pink reflection in one of the metal arms of her other chair. Her head whipped around. She froze.

In the doorway, there was a man covered in balloons. No, that wasn’t right. Where was his neck? Below the featureless blue globe of his head, there was nothing but a short string. Tight knots connected the shiny pink sausage-dog tendons of his arms to his thin twisted shoulders. His green feet were two swollen blobs. He moved lightly, bouncing like an astronaut.

“Gary! This isn’t funny!”

The balloon-man kept advancing towards her, weightless squeaking step after weightless squeaking step. The smell of plastic filled the air. Sudden memories of the glowering gunmen on the website. A scowling man wearing a T-shirt with a bald eagle on it – “Don’t retreat, switch to full-auto!“. A flare of anger filled her body. “It’s just balloons!“.

Without even thinking, she reached for one of the pens on her desk and clicked it. The coppery nib sparkled against the light above. Clutching it in her fist, she got to her feet.

The balloon-man was only a metre or two away. The smell of plastic was overpowering. Closing her eyes, she lunged forwards and stabbed. The pop was as loud as a gunshot. Clingy plastic spattered her face. The fingernails of her other hand gripped shiny rubber that gave way with a painful slap half a second later.

She kept stabbing. Pop! Pop! Pop!

What seemed like a minute later, Laura stopped to open her eyes and catch her breath. The floor was a sea of colour, one of those Jackson Pollock splatter paintings. Only two thin balloons remained attached together, a twitching knee or elbow. She stamped on it. Twice.

She grabbed her phone and ran. She ran down empty corridors, barely aware of the screams echoing behind the half-open doors. She reached the shiny metal lift doors and hammered the button. Half a second later, the doors hissed and groaned and squeaked before freezing a foot apart. Through the gap she could see three more of the balloon-men. A thin sausage-arm slipped through the gap and brushed her shoulder.

Almost falling over, she lurched towards the stairs. No-one was on them. Gripping the rail, she flew down them as quickly as possible. The thin arrow-slit windows on the wall seemed to glow with faint colours. Pink, orange, blue, red, green. The stairwell got darker as she reached the bottom. She didn’t care. All she cared about was leaving the building. Nothing else mattered. Not the discarded lager cans or the faint smell of vomit. Just the doors. The beautiful metal doors.

She barged them open with her shoulder and staggered into the cold fields outside, falling face-down onto the soft grass and breathing heavily. It’s over. I’m safe. Her muscles ached and throbbed. She rolled over and looked upwards.

Like an octopus devouring its prey, the giant multicoloured cloud had started to engulf the angular concrete building. From a distance, it looked red but, if she squinted, then she could make out patches of green and purple and blue. Individual balloons hovered around the edges of the giant cloud like grainy video static. Flies on a distant corpse.

Laura raised her phone. There was a small crack on the screen but it still lit up perfectly. She started recording. “If balloon videos are what people want…“.

“Profound Purple” A Short Story by C. A. Brown

Stay tuned for the next story at 7:30AM (GMT) tomorrow 🙂

Vincent closed his hardback journal, carefully putting the elastic strap back in place. It was a cheap clone bought online for a fiver. The cover was a bit more plasticky than the genuine article and the spine didn’t creak enough but, with 80gsm paper, it was just about sturdy enough to stand up to rollerball ink without bleed-through. He smirked to himself. Rollerball ink?

It was ink in a rollerball pen, but not the original ink. By gripping the nib with a pair of pliers and pulling out the feed mechanism, he could re-fill it with fountain pen ink using a syringe. “Greyson’s Pure Darkness”, to be precise.

A deep black ink with a faint iridescent sheen to it when held up to the light at the proper angle. Of course, the videos online had pointed out that you can only refill a disposable rollerball about ten times before the nib starts to wear out. Still cheaper and more user-friendly than a fountain pen though.

After carefully replacing the journal in its proper position on the shelf, Vincent turned the TV on.

“And now the DBC early evening news with Rachel Fernsborough“.

Dramatic music and pulsing red computer graphics swirled around on the screen before the camera zoomed in on a stern lady sitting behind a desk. She frowned: “Our top story tonight, another senseless killing by what has been dubbed the West Portsea Ripper. Although police have not released any information about the victim’s identity, they have confirmed that a note found at the scene of the crime connects this latest murder to the other recent killings.”

Vincent’s ears pricked up. A note?

The footage on the screen cut to a serious-looking bald man in a suit. The subtitle read “DCI Fergus Grittleworth”. He adjusted his tie: “CCTV footage has proven inconclusive. Eyewitnesses describe a person wearing a face mask, a dark woolen hat and black leather gloves but there is some conflict between reports as to their height. We have not discounted the possibility of multiple killers, but believe it to be unlikely. We advise people to lock all doors and windows at night and keep a phone on stand-by.”

He sighed: “We’ve also heard reports of people carrying knives or other weapons in the street for defence against the killer. Whilst we understand the fears, we should not have to remind you that not only is carrying weapons against the law, but it is also counter-productive in two ways. Firstly, the killer does not strike on the street. Secondly, if we catch someone with a knife, then we may well confuse them for the killer. Furthermore…”

Vincent wasn’t listening. All he could think about was the brief mention of a note. He had to know the paper and the pen. Was it a sloppy biro scrawl on cheap note-paper? Was it elaborate copperplate on vellum, inscribed in advance with a fountain pen. In which case, which pen? A compact Colecco Sportif would be a good choice for a killer on the go but, if they wrote it in advance, they could go for one of those ornate glass dip pens. The nib wouldn’t wear as much, making identification more difficult.

Forgetting to turn the television off, he raced over to his old desktop computer. In the ten minutes it took to load up, he kept thinking about the note. Printed letters with a marker pen would be more anonymous, but not very classy. What if they wrote it in the victim’s blood with an old-fashioned dip pen? No, too much forensic evidence left on the nib. Unless they threw away the nib every time, but that would mean that they were either using cheap internet-bought nibs – too much of a paper trail – or they were incredibly rich. If it was the latter, why were the police even bothering to search for them? The rich get away with everything.

When the computer finally loaded, Vincent double-clicked on the browser as fast as he could. Of course none of the mainstream news sites included photos of the note. There were probably Kafkaesque rules about disclosure of evidence. He didn’t care. He had to see the note. A general internet search revealed a lot of chatter, but no pictures. It had to be on there. Everything is on the internet.

Vaguely remembering something about how newspapers abroad were less prudish about showing the grisly details, he used the search engine’s translation feature to enter queries in other languages. France and Germany weren’t interested. Neither was Spain. But Italy? Oh boy, was Italy interested. The translation of the headline wasn’t perfect: “British «Giallo» Case – Detective Confused“. He didn’t care. He scrolled down until he found it.

A crisp HD phone photo of a business card lying on a grey carpet blotched with deep brown bloodstains. He downloaded the image and zoomed in on it. The handwriting was in cursive, the consistent line width implied either a ballpoint, rollerball or gel pen. Practical.

Vincent zoomed in further. The exact words didn’t matter – something about blood moons, the devil and Aquarius – he wanted to get a good look at the ink.

Computer monitors were notorious for subtly altering colours, but he’d tried out enough samplers to recognise the ink at once. “Argento’s Profound Purple”. The slightly reflective sheen, the tiny blotches of black that gave it is richly deep amethyst hue. The slight fading around the edges. A fellow refiller?

He did a couple more searches and then picked up the phone. To his surprise, he got straight through on his first try.

“DCI Grittleworth here, what is it?”

“Hello, I’m not sure if I got the right number from the internet but I’ve got information that might help you to...” Vincent froze. Of course the police knew what ink the killer used. Simple chromatography could tell them that. But, no, it’s America that has the national ink register. The police here might not have one.

He took a deep breath and continued: “… Identify the West Portsea Ripper. I was looking at international news articles and saw a photo of the note.”

“Bloody hell! If I catch the scrote that leaked that! Sorry, do go on...”

Vincent explained everything about the ink.

“Right, that actually sounds like it could be something. I’ll be over as soon as possible to take a proper statement. If I could just get your address…”

As he waited, Vincent smiled to himself. In all of his years of stationery collecting, he’d never expected it to actually be useful for anything. It was a way of passing the time, no different to car enthusiasts or coffee snobs. Everyone should have a fascination. And, at least it wasn’t serial killing.

He was so deep in thought that he almost missed the doorbell. Grittleworth looked slightly shorter and younger in person than he did on TV.

“Do you want any tea or anything or should we get down to business?”

“Business, I think.”

Once again, Vincent explained everything whilst Grittleworth took notes. When he finished, Vincent leaned in closer and said: “Sorry, personal interest, but I’ve always wondered what brand the standard-issue notebook is. If I had to guess, it was a French cahier of some kind, but I don’t imagine that...”

Grittleworth handed the notebook over to him. In profound purple ink on thick plain card-stock, the word “Dead” was repeated again and again. A thin smile crossed Grittleworth’s face: “Good thing you found my personal number. And, no, this notebook isn’t standard issue.” He reached into his jacket. “Now, Satan calls…“

“Sui Generis” A Short Story By C. A. Brown

Stay tuned for the next short story at 7:30AM (GMT)

“Hello lovely people and welcome back to A.I. Art with Alisa.” The lady with bright blue hair in the fancy purple studio smiled at the camera. “And have I got a good tip for you today. It’s true that image generators are advancing more and more by the week these days. Midjourney can even make realistic hands now!”

An uncannily realistic image of an old man playing a banjo, with all ten fingers even distributed properly between both hands too.

A few seconds later, Alisa appeared on the screen again. “That’s all very well if you have a subscription, but I want to make this one for you guys who are stuck with the low-end generators. Free ones. Ones built into other websites. I think that we all know what I’m talking about here’.” She winked at the camera.

“You’ve just got to play to the strengths of your generator. Do that and you’ll have a whole gallery of professional art ready for sale in mere minutes. Talking of which, a word from our sponsor…” Alisa spent the next two minutes talking enthusiastically about an ungodly hybrid of a crypto-currency and a non-fungible token.

“… And they already gave me three of them. Three! Give it a few years and I won’t even have to generate A.I. art any more! Only joking. It’s a serious creative vocation.” She tried to look sincere. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, low-end generators. If you’re playing with, sorry, creating with one of these then you need to play to their strengths.”

“In other words. No people. No hands and, most of all, no writing.” The three rules appeared beside her on the screen in neon green text. “It might sound like a limitation, but if you’re having trouble thinking of ideas then don’t worry, there is a whole suite of free GPT-4 based prompt generators online. Links in the description.” She pointed downwards.

“I have to admit though, you’ve gotta be careful with these prompt generators though. The results can be seriously impressive. It just took me a couple of clicks and I created THIS.”

The screen faded to black for half a second before a gloomy image of an old conservatory appeared on screen. There was nothing but darkness outside the dusty windows. The corrugated plastic roof bowed slightly in the middle. Piles of bric-a-brac lined both walls, creating a corridor which stretched endlessly into a dark void.

The image only lingered for two seconds. Short enough for people not to notice the chair with five legs. The old bottle with the drooping neck. The clock with melting hands and nothing but the number seven on its face.

“Neat, right? It’s part of my latest series which can be purchased from any of my socials. ‘Dark Ephemera’. Premium buyers will also receive access to all of the prompts that I used too. But, to recap – no people, no hands and no writing. And, until next time, keep generating!” Alisa flashed the peace sign at the camera.

In a dingy flat with a large green screen covering one of the chipped walls, Alisa leaned over her laptop. The video was almost ready for upload, but the image timings didn’t seem right. What if people paused the video? No, she realised, it’d have to be a short-form one. But what about the sponsor segment? She sighed and looked online for the free trial of an AI video editor. You got five free minutes, with a watermark in the corner.

“Oh please! What is this? 2008?“. It would be a simple matter of extracting the frames from the edited footage and using an A.I. tool to fill out the watermarked area. She could even get a text generator to write a macro to automate the process. Then another program to stitch the frames back together. If it could write excellent scripts, then it could probably make a simple program or two as well.

The whole process took an hour. Alisa had to admire her own creativity. To get around the image problem, the program had chosen to turn the conservatory picture into more of a background thumbnail overlaid over some extra B-roll that she’d added. “Deprioritise: IMG_NightmareDown_5bS733Lr.jpg” seemed to be the magic words here. After checking it over again, she uploaded it to the website and set the scheduling time.

Only one thought went through her mind – coffee. She got up and walked over to the dark kitchen door. Stepping through it, she fumbled for the light switch. Gotta save power, good for the planet. But, instead of touching angled plastic, her fingers scraped across rough brick. “What the actual…”

She fumbled for her phone. That free belt holster from the sponsor two videos ago was actually useful. There’s a first for everything. Squinting against the bright screen, she found the flashlight app – another sponsor gift, even including three free months of the premium mode which bypassed the phone’s safety limiters to give you camera flash levels of lumens. She tapped it. Her jaw dropped.

The conservatory didn’t quite look like her pictures. One of the walls was made out of brick. There were branching junctions and plastic doors. The chairs only had four legs. Raindrops silently spattered the dark windows. There was a box with some sort of old 1970s board game on top of one of the junk piles.

She turned around, almost expecting to see the lounge door behind her. There was nothing but a wall of white plastic monobloc chairs in its place.

With nowhere to go but forwards, Alisa pressed on into the darkness. None of this felt real. It felt empty and soulless, like some asset-flip indie horror game. OMG! New video idea! Her phone light dimmed for a couple of seconds whilst she made a note of this. When she reached the first junction, she remembered the old adage about being stuck in a hedge maze. Keep your hand on the right-hand wall… or was it the left?

No, it was the right. The left-hand passage led to a dead end blocked by a jangled heap of old lawnmowers. The right-hand passage led to a three-way junction with an old chocolate tin in the middle. It was filled with rusty screws. Alisa’s phone light dimmed again as she did an internet search for a random number generator to help her choose. No signal.

Which one? She thrust her phone towards each of the three corridors. Even with the extra brightness, all she could see was white walls, dark windows and silhouetted piles of stuff. Then, out of the darkness from the left-hand corridor, a bright blue flash. Her vision went orange for half a second before adjusting. Her whole body shuddered.

“Hello?”

She regretted speaking even before she had finished the word. Thankfully, there was nothing but silence in reply. She backed towards the right-hand passage and started running, keeping her eyes on the warped pine-board floor. A solitary blue roller skate almost sent her flying. An old garden parasol pole almost tripped her. She kept running, almost colliding with the wall of a T-junction. Which way?

Before she could decide, there was another blue flash. This one was brighter and it lingered. Everything was blue. All she could think about was blue. She didn’t even have a body, just the awareness of the colour blue. Then words. Words that were existence itself. “RealGen v.5 has encountered an error and must close. Latest auto-backup of reality: 29-10-53.“

“Weekend Warriors” A Short Story By C. A. Brown

Stay tuned for the next story at 7:30AM (GMT) tomorrow 🙂

[Transcript of an interview recorded for the October 2023 issue of Horror Pulse Monthly (HPM) with Lorna Redcliffe (LR) and Callum Grout (CG), two members of the Hampsford Zombie Apocalypse Preparation Society.]

HPM: Honestly, we thought that grizzled survivalists and “preppers” were more of an American thing.

CG: Nope. They exist over here as well. Idiots.

LR: Yeah, why anyone would want to be on the losing side of a zombie apocalypse is completely beyond me.

HPM: Hold on a minute, are you two on the side of the… zombies?

LR: We’re just preparing for the inevitable. Plus, it’s just relaxing too. People talk a lot about “mindfulness”, but mindlessness is where it is at. Lurching around the countryside in a crowd, not caring about what you look like, letting out a moan whenever you feel like it, not thinking about anything but food.

CG: Strength in numbers, as well. I mean, you get the occasional farmer trying to take a pot shot at us, but they mostly just scarper as soon as they see the horde approaching. It’s one hell of a rush.

HPM: Is it like cosplay or something? Any make-up tips for Halloween?

LR: Cos-what? We just get together and start lurching. It’s all very natural, just like it will be in real life. Sorry, would be in real life.

CG: Yeah. Like when the experiments go wrong or the incantations are recited or whatever, people aren’t going to have time to faff around with silly costumes.

HPM: You mentioned hordes, is it really that popular?

LR: Too right, it is! Not many of us are open about it, but you’ll find plenty of fellow zombies in every office, church, police station, school or newspaper. We’re huge on social media as well. Well, sort of. The “influencers” grab all of the attention, but if you look at their followers, then you can usually find like-minded people.

CG: Don’t forget the footie as well! I went to an away game once and I could swear that I recognised at least half of the people in the stands.

HPM: Have you lot actually watched any of the films? They’re meant to be satire. When George Romero made “Dawn Of The Dead” in the seventies, he set one part in a shopping centre precisely to…

LR: Sorry to interrupt, but it’s funny that you mention shopping centres. With everyone buying things online now, they’re practically dead. Talk to the right manager and we can pretty much have the whole place to ourselves for the day.

CG: Corridors are a bit narrow though. I almost got crushed against the window of a Woolworths once. Shame about what happened to that shop. If anything embodied the steadfast, unfailing spirit of a true zombie, it was Woolworths. It didn’t need to advertise, there was a branch in every town, it lasted for decades….

LR: The pick and mix wasn’t bad either.

HPM: Can’t argue there. But, anyway, isn’t the whole point of the zombie genre to satirise conformity? You lot sound like you actually enjoy it.

CG: Wisdom of crowds, mate. There have been studies and stuff. Strength in numbers as well.

HPM: Seriously? I daren’t even ask who you vote for.

LR: (Shrugs) Tory, Labour, whoever really. The government is the government. Both major parties are zombie-friendly. I mean, yeah, they banned some of our movies way back. But that’s just for show. Deep down, whether blue or red, every political party loves a nice horde of zombies.

CG: How do you think we get permission for our events?

HPM: You actually get permission?

LR: Of course! We’re zombies, not criminals! In fact, the leader of our local society actually helped with the consultation for the latest regulations about mass events.

HPM: Sorry. I guess I assumed that you were just marauding across the countryside, eating people and stuff.

CG: Things can get a bit out of hand sometimes. But that’s just life, you know. Just letting off steam.

LR: For the record, there has never been a single criminal case brought against a zombie. One of the judges told me that last weekend.

HPM: I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but…

CG: Then, don’t. Simples.

LR: Yeah, we’re just normal people. Normal people doing what normal people were meant to do. What we were taught to do. Not everyone wants to be some weirdo who… Sorry. I get a bit angry about this. Not very zombie-like of me.

CG: It’s ok, you’re still one of us. Relax. Let out an “Uuurgh!” or two and don’t think about anything but what really matters.

LR: Uuurgh! Uurrgh! Brraiiins!!!! Ah, much better.

HPM: Ok, it’s probably unprofessional, but do you lot like to eat brains because you don’t actually have any of your own?

CG: Steady on, mate. I’ve got two GCSEs.

LR: Elitist.

HPM: Sorry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go to the camping shop to stock up on supplies. Until next time.

“Quiet Ridge” A Short Story By C. A. Brown

(With profound apologies to Team Silent for this bizarre parody). Stay tuned for the next story at 7:30AM (GMT) tomorrow 🙂

[Archived post recovered from the r/ManifestationMagic Sub-Reddit on the 27th October 2023. Deleted seven hours after posting, username unknown.]

OMG guys! This is so brilliant that its actually scary! I manifested a trip to Quiet Ridge! Like, not the actual Quiet Ridge obviously – that’s somewhere in a weird hybrid of America and Japan – but a town in the Lake District called Helton-On-Ullswater. Like it wasn’t even on the satnav or anything, but I was on holiday there with my bf and we took a wrong turn and… manifestation!

Suppose I should explain more for all of you non-gamers out there. Like, the “Quiet Ridge” games aren’t exactly positive vibes or anything, but I absolutely LOVED them when I was a teenager. In fact, they laid the groundwork for my interest in manifestation too. They’re old-school survival horror games from the early 2000s – tank controls and fixed cameras. Games where people go to this rainy rural town and it reflects their worst fears and darkest memories. Like seriously scary stuff. And I loved them. They stopped making them in 2004, or at least that’s what we super-fans like to believe.

Anyway, techniques! The funny thing was that I didn’t even really have to think much about them. Like, yes, I was getting nostalgic about these old games again a week or two earlier and there were a few signs. One morning, a couple of days before the holiday, there was this beautiful fog everywhere. Not the amazing rain from the games, but close enough. Took more than a few photos. Was going to post it here as a manifestation in its own right, but I was crazy busy with everything.

Like, yes, I wanted to manifest some way to play these old games again. I’d lie in bed half-asleep, feeling the controller in my hands and seeing the pouring rain on the screen of my current TV. Genuinely thought that I’d stumble across a cheap second-hand copy of the PC port, someone throwing out an old console or there would be a re-release or something. But mostly, I just imagined it for fun. Present tense, first-person perspective, as realistic as possible. You know the drill.

Anyway, my bf and I went on holiday to the Lake District. A recession staycation. Yes, “scarcity mindset” and all of that, but he isn’t into this stuff and doesn’t seem interested. And, honestly, we’d got a really good deal on a holiday cottage.

And, like, instant small manifestation on the first day! We were looking around a village, can’t remember the name, and there was still actually a proper old-school game shop there. Like physical discs and everything, unchanged since the 2000s. It even had the gloom and the vaguely creepy shopkeeper you’d expect from one of those old game shops as well. Alas, no “Quiet Ridge” games though.

Anyway, third day, we take a wrong turn and end up in Helton-On-Ullswater. OMG! Guys! This is JUST like the game! Like, the streets were completely empty and there was THE best rain you have ever seen. Like it was dense enough that you couldn’t see more than like ten metres ahead of you. So many beautiful pine trees on the road into town as well.

My bf’s old satnav threw up an error and I couldn’t get any phone signal. We’d forgotten to pack cagoules as well. So, we parked as close as possible to the nearest shop and made a run for it. I’ve had showers that were less enthusiastic than this rain.

It was closed, but when we sheltered in the doorway, I looked through the windows. One of those old pharmacies. The posters on the window were faded as well, selling medicines I hadn’t heard of before. Like those weird made-up brand names they use in films to dodge copyright. “Cappol”. “Cold Drain!”. “Cafsperin”. That sort of thing. I couldn’t get a good look through the grimy window but there seemed to be brown glass bottles and slightly old boxes on the shelves. Like, if you grew up in the nineties, you’ll know what I mean.

And the RAIN! Literally every streak of it was like a white gel pen line, like something from an old videogame. All of the shops on the other side of the street were almost just hazy silhouettes. Low detail models. Sorry, being a bit nerdy there. But that isn’t even the best bit. Over the hammering radio-static rain, we could barely even hear each other’s voices and yet there was this… quietness. Like its cliché and everything but I genuinely got the sense that we were literally the only people in town, just like the games.

I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay SO much. To run along those spattered streets with a spanner in my hand, fending off diabolical creatures and reading cryptic notes. Solving bizarre puzzles and having mysterious conversations with a strange man who looks like an even more handsome version of my bf. Like, I was THERE for it. I was BEING it.

Then, out of the silver-white sheets of rain, there was movement. On one level, I was a bit scared. But I was also just so excited too. I’d always wondered what my “version” of the town would look like. Would the monsters be shaped like giant fleshy arachnids? Would there be the usual mutant teachers which show up in like every entry of the series? Yes, I should have been scared but this was just too ridiculously cool.

The shape got closer. Honestly, I thought that it was the Grim Reaper, with the pointy black hood and the long stick. It’s lazy writing, but hardly anyone isn’t deeply afraid of him.

But, no, when he got closer, he was just a man in a rain poncho with some kind of camera stand. Apparently we’d stumbled onto a film set by mistake. The road sign must have gotten blown over by the rain. Closed set too. I tried to ask him what film it was, but he wouldn’t say. We had to leave. OMG guys! If it’s an adaptation of “Quiet Ridge”, like a new one rather than that one from 2005 that got the story wrong….

Anyway, that’s when things got really weird. We got back in the car and started driving and I thought that we’d left the town. Like, seriously, I saw pine trees out of the side window again and started typing all of this out on my phone ready to post it. But, after what seemed like twenty minutes, we found another town. Still raining cats and dogs. We got out of the car again and sheltered in a doorway. And, you won’t believe it, but it was literally the SAME pharmacy as before.

Then a sound. Like, I thought that it was thunder. Loudest, strangest thunder that I’d ever heard. More like a roar. My bf got scared and insisted that we drive away. We did. The rain kept pouring. Another town. The same pharmacy. And then again after that.

Like, I don’t know if anyone is actually reading this far in, but I saw something the fourth time round. A moving silhouette between the veils of rain. Almost looked like a dinosaur, one of those… what was the name… stegosauruses. Long low body, lots of ridges and plates on its back. It was gone before I could really take a good look. But it was a stegosaurus. How on Earth do I even know that na…

The museum! Oh shit, not the museum! I didn’t need to remember THAT!

“May The Secret Be Kept” A Short Story By C. A. Brown

Stay tuned for the next story at 7:30AM (GMT) tomorrow 🙂

The blonde woman in the tight red dress stood in front of the purple curtains and raised her arms. Half a second later, the congregation did the same. In a perfectly-rehearsed voice, she said: “Abracadabra!“.

“Abracadabra!” The response was deafening, three thousand voices crying out in unison. Three thousand faces, mere pinpricks from the stage.

She was unfazed. “May the secret be kept!”

“May the secret be kept!” The faces in the front row contorted with fervour. Staring eyes, wrinkled cheeks, bared teeth.

“Please put your hands together for Arch-Magician Metterford, who is visiting us to perform today’s demonstration.”

Applause like machine-gun fire. Scattered cries of “Abracadaba!“.

The blonde woman melted into the shadows. The lights dipped. The purple curtains parted, revealing nothing but a dark void with a spot-lit wooden table. A tall man wearing a top hat, adorned with a thin red band, walked onto the stage. He placed the hat on the table and turned it upside-down. The rabbit and the flowers were a formality.

“Oooh! Aaah!” The crowd’s responses were in perfect time with each item Metterford pulled from the hat. After the string of handkerchiefs, he gave a perfunctory bow. Five seconds of applause, no more.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to tonight’s show!” He raised his arms. Three sequin-clad assistants emerged from the shadows and stood in perfect formation behind him. Metterford reached into his jacket and produced his wand. Both tips, like his hat-band, were red. The crowd were silent. Six thousand eyes, pinpricks in the gloom.

Metterford lowered his voice. “No doubt that all of you have seen the news. It’s a tougher time than any for all of us. Heretics openly calling all of this…” A scowl. “…Illusions, trickery.” He spat both words out, waiting for the boos and hisses to fade.

“But all of you are here tonight, on this Saturday evening, so there is still hope left in the world.” He waved his wand. “And, for today’s demonstration, I want to eliminate all doubt“. Loud cheers from the crowd. “A testament to the power of MAGIC! Can I get an ‘Abracadabra”?”

“Abracadabra!” An old lady in the second row cupped her hands like a megaphone. A teenage boy in a baggy T-shirt raised his left arm and trembled. A businessman with a flushed face waved a piece of paper.

Two of the assistants carried a large wooden box, painted with stars and planets, onto the stage. The other silently slipped away. Pyrotechnics flashed and sparked at both ends of the stage. Metterford stood beside the box. “This is a new demonstration!” 

Cheers. Occasional shouts of “May the secret be kept!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it may well be the case that this is my last demonstration. For there will be peril and danger!” Everyone gasped in perfect unison. “Escapology, my friends!” He gestured towards the two remaining assistants. They raised, turned and opened the box. “No false bottom.”

“No false bottom!” Hoarse voices from the crowd. An elderly man swayed.

Metterford nodded. He stamped on the floor where the box had just been. “No hidden trapdoor!”

“No hidden trapdoor!”

The assistants replaced the box. Metterford climbed into it with practiced motions. The crowd was silent. He crouched and closed the lid.

From hidden speakers all around the auditorium, Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” wheeled and blasted at full volume. The two assistants produced chains and padlocks, seemingly from nowhere, and began wrapping the box. The crowd sat in reverent silence.

With a sudden flash and a cloud of blue smoke, the third assistant reappeared with a flaming torch. The music intensified. Another assistant raised a bottle of lighter fluid and began to squeeze and spray it over the box. The final assistant started to juggle three sharp swords. Six thousand eyes stared intently.

Unseen by the crowd, the box shook and rattled slightly. The faint banging of fist on wood was drowned out by the thunderous music. The stubborn squeaking of concealed hinges that had not seen oil for more than twenty shows. Muttered curses. Unseen grimaces.

Flame touched fuel. The audience gasped. The juggler threw the three swords into the air, catching one and letting the other assistants catch the other two. They stood around the burning box in perfect triangular formation. Firelight glowed against reflective steel. The music reached its peak. Taking a simultaneous step backwards, they waited for half a second before lunging forwards and thrusting the blades into the box.

With the blazing flames dancing for them, few audience members saw the dark dripping trails running along the blades. The crashing cymbals and blaring horns engulfed the howls from within the box. It was only when one of the assistants broke their perfect poise and staggered backwards that the audience began to gasp.

———

Two hundred miles away, Arch-Magician Trevannick steepled her hands and stared at the monitor. “Told him. Didn’t I tell him?”

Behind her, Street-Magician Luprece put his hand to his mouth as he watched the other two assistants on the screen flee the stage. The crowd stayed in their seats. “Why aren’t the crowd running?”

“Have I taught you nothing? They still believe it is part of the act. We must move swiftly.” She closed her eyes. “Authorisation granted. Detonate the charges.”

Luprece didn’t waver or question. He pulled a key from his jacket. Trevannick produced one from her robes. They slipped them into keyholes on the desk in front of the monitor and turned them in perfect sync.

“May the secret be kept!” She pushed the button. There was nothing but static on the monitor.

Announcement: Halloween Stories (26th-31st October 2023)

Ooops! Just updated this title illustration. There’s also going to be a story on the 31st too. It is Halloween, after all.

I am very pleased to announce that Halloween stories will be appearing here at 7:30AM (GMT/UTC) between the 26th – 31st October this year 🙂 [Edit: Oh, and there will also be a round-up post late at night on Halloween, in case you missed any of them]

Although I hadn’t planned to write any this year, I suddenly felt inspired to prepare six of them back in June. This year’s theme is “The bizarre”… and they’re certainly a weird collection of tales!

There’s a grim dystopian story, another manifestation-themed horror story, a cynical satire, an eerie sci-fi horror story, a  quirky “Giallo movie”-inspired mystery story and an utterly ridiculous monster story.

If you can’t wait until the 26th, then you can also check out last year’s stories here too 🙂

I Tried To Write About The Modern Internet Like A Dystopian 1980s Cyberpunk Novel… (Experimental Fiction)

Ok, for context: It’s New Year’s day and I’ve only had four hours of sleep. It’s the kind of aimless tiredness where concentration and focus go out of the window and I end up aimlessly wasting time watching random stuff on the internet. Yet, from sheer daily repetition, I still feel the instinct to prepare a blog article.

Suddenly, my sleep-deprived brain has a “This is a terrible idea, but it could be fun” moment. And I thought that I’d try to write about the modern internet like it would appear in a dystopian 1980s cyberpunk novel, even though it has been more than a decade since I last read one (I read about five or six 1990s cyberpunk novels a few years ago though, and parts are probably closer in style to those…).

Many profuse apologies to William Gibson and others for this dreadful pastiche/parody. In my defence, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And, hey, at least it’s human-generated. So, let’s get started…

——————————————————–

Every video recording on the hub page has a little “thumbnail” picture. A neat grid of them stretches downwards on an infinite scroll. Some people say you can reach the bottom. Logically, it must be true. But no-one ever makes it to the bottom.

Algorithms, watching every decision, shape the page to the viewer – pushing content that is meant to keep you watching for one more video. “One more video” adds up over millions upon millions of visitors. But who wants to leave? This is better than television!

I select a video. An A.I. program out in San Francisco has crunched through the works of a dead singer, measuring the pitch and gaps between each recorded sound. Statistical patterns. Data. From that, it has generated two new thirty-second songs played back-to-back.

The lyrics are mumbled and garbled. Still, it actually sounds like him. Like the sort of bootleg demo recordings that more dedicated fans than me talk about as if they’re more important than the three famous songs everyone still somehow knows.

It’s only a minute long, but I watch it four times. Has to be deliberate. View counts are everything on here. Four one-minute views are better than one four-minute one. Everything is short, time is currency. Below the video, people have left virtual graffiti.

Scholarly discussions about alternate histories where the singer lived and the band kept going. Angry luddite comments about how the new music has “no soul”. Sarcastic comparisons to other bands. The page tolerates the graffiti, encourages it actually. Makes people feel like they’re doing something meaningful. Keeps them looking. Engagement with video content.

The song gets stale after four listens. Back to the thumbnail grid. A few seconds later, I end up watching “memes”. The term was originally meant to describe ideas spreading like a virus. These videos aren’t ideas.

They’re badly-animated narrow-screen recyclings of crudely-edited comedy pictures narrated by a robot voice. Newspaper cartoons without the art. Photos and captions. Graffiti humour. The same cartoon faces – only existing on the net – show up again and again, mixed between out-of-context video clips and screenshots from movies.

Some are actually funny. There have probably been papers written about how they make grand points about the human condition, but who reads more than a few sentences of text these days? Video is everything. Time is currency. Algorithms do our thinking for us.

I notice that I’ve already watched seven collections of “memes”. The background music is jaunty and catchy, but even a full net search reveals no clue as to what it is from. Could it actually be an original piece written for the video? Heresy!

I leave the videos, distracted by another part of the net. A comedy article made out of pictures with facts written on them. Short again. Everything is short. One grabs my attention and I read further. Over in Vancouver, Canada, the streets are bathed in a deep purple glow from the streetlights. Like something from a low-budget pandemic studio concert video or the lights on a high-end gaming machine. It’s beautiful.

Turns out that it’s a malfunction. A defect in the chemical coating for the high-efficiency LED emitters. Purple-blue is their natural colour. I glance away from the net for a second. The LED bulb in my room still glows a warm shade of lightbulb-yellow. Almost like the old filament bulbs. Who remembers those? I return to the net. The city officials want to replace the streetlights with normal ones. There’s no place for creativity these days.

I get distracted by a video clip of some vintage comedy show from ninety-eight. The people almost look modern, but their outfits are just slightly more formal and generic. No-one glances at a smartphone – a tiny slab of silicon and plastic that allows you to take the net with you everywhere. Sometimes their absence is the only way you can tell that something is from the olden days. The jokes in the video are still funny. There’s approving graffiti below it, a rare sight for old stuff these days.

When I look for another video on the grid, I actually bother reading the titles. Most of them are written in “clickbait”. Like a carnival barker mixed with a tabloid headline. Unfinished sentences written to make you curious. People claiming to have done weird things. Designed to grab attention. By this point, its basically a language in its own right. You’re no-one on the net if you don’t know how to speak clickbait.

I select a heavy metal cover version of “Hotel California” with a picture of a zombie on the thumbnail. It seemed appropriate.

——————

Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

All Five Of My Halloween 2022 Short Stories :)

Well, in case you missed any of them, here are links to all five of my “Halloween 2022” short stories.  Although I hadn’t planned to write any this year, I had some extra time and a sudden moment of inspiration 🙂

Yes, the series was originally going to be longer, but I eventually went for a “quality over quantity” approach after writing one or two failed draft stories. So, you’re only getting the very best that I wrote this October 🙂

If you’re interested in more Halloween stories, older ones from 2016-18 can also be found on the “Short Stories” page too.

Anyway, the theme this year is “found footage” and these stories were so much fun to write. There’s a mixture of beautiful “art-horror”, goofy comedy horror, grim dark comedy and weird cosmic/ psychological horror too.

So, why not take a look?

• “Walking In The Rain“: Fiona has a relaxation routine she follows every night. Goth music and  online videos of rainy cities. But, there’s something… unusual… about the latest video the algorithm has sent her.
• “Six Photographs“: The old camera had most of a roll of film left in it. Just try not to think too much about what was on the other six photographs which had been taken beforehand….
• “On The Bright Side…“: Tune in to the latest episode of Lena Lovejoy-Letterworth’s Positivity Podcast, where she shares the joyous story of how she manifested an old mansion for a fraction of the asking price….
• “Final Cut“: A grubby internet troll has a tranche of hacked bloopers and out-takes from influencers and gaming channels, but there’s one video in there he didn’t remember getting….
• “The Cursed Cagoule“: The year, 2020. Lorna has decided to write a blog to pass the time during lockdown. However, there’s a mix-up with one of her online shopping orders….