…and we’re back, just in time for the closing stretch. The Kid is doing fine, though things took a bit longer than expected. The same goes for getting back into my regular routine after eleven days of holding down the home front by myself while the ladies were at the hospital. At least my car […]

My plan for daily Countdown posts went into the shitter on Friday when we had to deal with the real-life nightmare of the Kid getting admitted to the hospital, where she and Maura have been since. It’s no COVID-related, but related to a preexisting condition. She’s doing okay though what happens next is still being […]

“With a cold shiver he could not control, Polen was suddenly conscious of a single fly loose in the room, veering aimlessly for a moment, then beating strongly and reverently towards Beelzebub.” – Isaac Asimov, “Flies” (1953) Recommended listening: Alien Sex Fiend – Buggin’ Me (from a 1986 single) I wish I’d held back the […]

Figure Two: And this pattern is always the same? Figure One: With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find…and it’s themselves. And all we need do is sit back…and watch. Figure Two: Then I take it this place…this Maple Street…is not unique. Figure One: [Shaking his head.] By no means. Their […]

When I opened the door into the elm-arched blackness a gust of insufferably foetid wind almost flung me prostrate. I choked in nausea, and for a second scarcely saw the dwarfed, humped figure on the steps. The summons had been Edward’s, but who was this foul, stunted parody? Where had Edward had time to go? […]

“We tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away.” – Albert Camus, The Plague (1947) Some virulent flu-like disease has been my go-to Horseman of Speculated […]

The weekend following the arrival of my unique treasure, I experienced a particularly violent sneeze which dislodged a small fragment of tissue in my left eye, causing a half-moon shaped blind spot right in the center of my vision. It wasn’t anything serious, but just another one of the little nightmares that become the norm […]

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear: just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels […]

“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of […]

I’m not what form the Halloween Countdown will take this year. A deadly plague is sweeping a world already pushed to the brink of hysteria. Meanwhile, your humble narrator has spent the last six months walled up in his ancient New England manse, surrounded by dusty artifacts of bygone ages. His body still suffers the […]