The old brownstone apartment she simply had to have. The grotesque blind priest who watched down on her day and night from an upper-story window. The pair of perverted creatures who wanted her to join their circle. The mad little old man who gave her tea and sympathy. The cool, calculating, supremely rational lover who first mocked her fears.And the secret you will never be able to forget, even if you try...

    From dark fantasy and pure suspense to classic horror tales of vampires and zombies, 999 showcases the extraordinary scope of fantastical fright fiction. The stories in this anthology are a relentless tour de force of fear, which will haunt you, terrify you, and keep the adrenaline rushing all through the night.Amerikanski dead at the Moscow morgue / Kim Newman --The ruins of contracoeur / Joyce Carol Oates --The owl and the pussycat / Thomas M. Disch --The road virus heads north / Stephen King --Keepsakes and treasures: a love story / Neil Gaiman --Growing things / T.E.D. Klein --Good Friday / F. Paul Wilson --Excerpts from the records of the New Zodiac and the diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax / Chet Williamson --An exaltation of termagants / Eric Von Lustbader --Itinerary / Tim Powers --Catfish gal blues / Nancy A. Collins --The entertainment / Ramsey Campell --ICU / Edward Lee --The shadow, the darkness / Thomas Ligotti --Rio Grande Gothic / David Morrell --Des Saucisses, Sans doute / Peter Schneider --Angie / Ed Gorman --The ropy thing / Al Sarrantonio --The tree is my hat / Gene Wolfe --Styx and bones / Edward Bryant --Hemophage / Steven Spurill --The book of irrational numbers / Michael Marshall Smith --Mad dog summer / Joe R. Lansdale --The Theater / Bentley Little --Rehearsals / Thomas F. Monteleone --Darkness / Dennis L. McKiernan --Elsewhere / William Peter Blatty

    And when an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find a something that's both powerful and terrifying. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims.Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore―who just happens to be Jewish―to shed some light on the mysterious happenings. And unbeknownst to anyone, there is another visitor on his way―a man who awoke from a nightmare and immediately set out to meet his destiny.The battle has begun: On one side, the ultimate evil created by man, and on the other...the unthinkable, unstoppable, unknowing terror that man has inevitably awakened.

    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

    Before long, it was adapted into illustrations, audio recordings, and short films; and that was before it was revised and expanded into a novel!How much do you remember about your childhood?In Penpal, a man investigates the seemingly unrelated bizarre, tragic, and horrific occurrences of his childhood in an attempt to finally understand them. Beginning with only fragments of his earliest years, you'll follow the narrator as he discovers that these strange and horrible events are actually part of a single terrifying story that has shaped the entirety of his life and the lives of those around him. If you've ever stayed in the woods just a little too long after dark, if you've ever had the feeling that someone or something was trying to hurt you, if you remember the first friend you ever made and how strong that bond was, then Penpal is a story that you won't soon forget, despite how you might try.

    One, there's never been an actual authenticated haunted house. Two, it's not the house that's haunted, but the person.Callie is a young architectural student who marries Mateo, a wine importer, and moves to a grand old house in Southern Spain. Hyperion House is flooded with light, it also has a mute gardener, a sinister housekeeper and a sealed, dark servants' quarters that nobody has the keys for. And although initially happy, and taking care of Mateo's daughter, Callie can't help being drawn to the dark empty rooms at the back of the house, and becomes convinced that someone is living in there.Uncovering the house's history, she discovers the shocking truth. As Callie's fear of the darkness returns, she comes to understand the true nature of evil.

    But nothing in his life on the knife-edge of London's Underworld could prepare him for the horror of Demogorgon. It is centuries old: Satan is its lord and master. It walks the earth in the guise of a man, but it is not a man: it is the very essence of evil. Across many years.and nations, Demogorgon has sown the seeds of hell...now, it is calling its children home. Demogorgon's power grows with every soul it devours--and if Charlie Trace can't stop it, he will be its next victim!

    Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us....Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... of The Croning.From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.

    Justin Gray, a former small-time drug dealer in St. Louis, has arrived in Tampa, FL, to start a new life. But on his first night in town his buddy Erik takes him to a disco, where he tries a mild dose of skullflush. Another of Erik's friends takes a larger dose and is tranformed into a ravenous beast who practically devours four people on the dance floor and then commits suicide. Local dealer Tony Mendoza begins a search for Justin, the only witness who knows what really happened in the disco that night. Mendoza himself is sought by the Yanomamo warrior Kerebawa, who travels to America to retrieve skullflush and avenge its theft before it is sniffed by too much of Tampa's "nightlife."

    These uniquely ter­rifying apparitions lead him on a thrilling and suspenseful ride to confront a wicked soul, and will leave an indelible mark on lovers of high-quality suspense and horror alike. Nicholas Close has always had an uncanny intuition, but after the death of his wife he becomes haunted, literally, by ghosts doomed to repeat their final violent moments in a chilling and endless loop. Torn by guilt and fearing for his sanity, Nicholas returns to his childhood home and is soon entangled in a dis­turbing series of disappearances and  murders—both as a sus­pect and as the next victim of the malignant evil lurking in the heart of the woods. Stephen M. Irwin is the kind of debut author that readers love to discover—and rave about to all their friends. His electric use of language, stunning imagery, and suspenseful pacing are all on full display here. The Dead Path is a tour de force of wild imagination, taut suspense, and the creepiest, scariest setting since the sewers in Stephen King’s It.

    Yet her history is full of fatal accidents and three of Dark Echo's owners met tragic, violent deaths. Now she has been rebuilt, crossing the Atlantic with new owners. Only the truth about Harry Spalding, the man who built her, can save them from the same fate.

    But now Ligotti has pulled together a collection of his favorite fiction, both old and new, representing his best and most characteristic works.Thomas Ligotti's stories are perhaps best described as dark magical realism. Many of his stories center on the distorted perspective of a frequently doomed narrator. The title story, "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World," reimagines a kind of Bradbury-like small town that encounters the appearance of a kind of existential darkness, written with a sharp imagery like that of William S. Burroughs. In story after story in this collection, Ligotti does not merely present his readers with isolated incidents of supernatural horror - he challenges them to confront nightmares that are entwined in the very fabric of life itself.QUOTES:"The best new American writer of weird fiction to appear in years" - The Washington Post"Ligotti is wonderfully original; he has a new vision of a dark and special kind, a vision that no one had before him." - Interzone"Aficianados of the macabre consider Ligotti one of the finest writers in the field" - The Sunday Times"Thomas Ligotti is an absolute master of supernatural horror and weird fiction, and a true original. He pursues his unique vision with admirable honesty and rigorousness and conveys it in prose as powerfully evocative as any writer in the field. I'd say he might just be a genius." - Ramsey Campbell ("Britain's most respected living horror writer," according to the Oxford Companion toEnglish Literature)

    Something is wrong. With her marriage, with her husband, with her. But as she pours her heart out to her diary, it’s clear she doesn’t know what. Until one explosive night she finds a possible answer. Suddenly hated and vilified by everyone, she clings to her relationship – even while wondering if she really knows her husband at all... INVISIBLE is a stunningly powerful, gripping and original psychological thriller of subtle insight that takes you on a twisted journey through one woman’s marriage. Perfect for fans of THE WIDOW and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. "Totally gripping and scarily believably characters. One of the most assured debuts of the year" BELLA "Dark, gripping, twisted - we loved it!" REAL PEOPLE MAGAZINE "This psychological thriller will stay with you for a long time after you've put it down" CRIME CONFIDENTIAL "Seriously impressed. Such a powerful psychological thriller... Monumental character development" MANY BOOKS, MANY LIVES "Totally and utterly convincing," POSTCARD REVIEWS "Quietly brilliant," BY THE LETTER BOOK REVIEWS "All-consuming. I lived and breathed this book. An absolutely gripping read, and quite unforgettable," BEING ANNE

    Prepare to never look at your phone the same way again . . .Kate Collins has been ghosted.She was supposed to be moving in with her new boyfriend Scott, but all she finds after relocating to Brighton is an empty apartment. Scott has vanished. His possessions have all disappeared.Except for his mobile phone.Kate knows she shouldn't hack into Scott's phone. She shouldn't look at his Tinder, his calls, his social media. But she can't quite help herself.That's when the trouble starts. Strange, whispering phone calls from numbers she doesn't recognise. Scratch marks on the walls that she can't explain. And the growing feeling that she's being watched.Kate refuses to leave the apartment - she's not going anywhere until she's discovered what happened to Scott. But the deeper she dives into Scott's digital history the more Kate realises just how little she really knows about the man she loves.

    What will begin, however, with the solemnity of marriage vows will end in the echoing screams of the damned - an ungodly spectacle of spilled blood and sobbing, throat-aching terror. There is a curse that grips the Bradwins from generation to generation, from horror to bloody horror, and that climaxes in a spine-chilling nightmare of black occultism and blood vengeance.