On Pine Street, the houses begin to shake. The earth begins to move. The streets crack open and yards split asunder…and rising from subterranean depths far below, a viscid black muck bubbles up and floods the neighborhood.In it are a ravenous army of gigantic worms seeking human flesh. They wash into houses, they come up through the sewers, through plumbing, filling toilets and tubs, seeking human prey.Cut off from the rest of the town, the people of Pine Street must wage a...

Available for the first time in a collection, three of Tim Curran's novellas—Worm, Blackout, and The UnderdwellingWORMOn Pine Street, the houses begin to shake. The earth begins to move. The streets crack open and yards split asunder…and rising from subterranean depths far below, a viscid black muck bubbles up and floods the neighborhood.In it are a ravenous army of gigantic worms seeking human flesh. They wash into houses, they come up through the sewers, through p...

With a kid on the way, Boyd needed the job bad. But the idea of going underground at the Hobart Mine, down into the dark labyrinth of tunnels to get at the raw ore, left him with a brooding sense of unease. Maybe it was the fact that his father had died down in the mines or maybe it was something much worse.Digging a new drift down in Level #8, the lowest level of the mine, an immense shaft opens up. Boyd and a few others volunteer to explore it. Some 400 feet down, they find a pas...

200 years ago, the village of Clavitt Fields was burned to the ground. It was hoped that what lived there had perished in the fire. But they did not perish. They went underground …For generations, they lived and bred in darkness, adapting themselves to a subterranean existence. Now they are rising to the surface, and what they've become is a horror beyond belief, a crawling nightmare of evil and bloodthirsty violence bent on destruction.The night is alive … and it belongs t...

FOLLOWING A MAJOR PANDEMIC, THE COUNTRY IS IN RUINS. WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER IS A HELLZONE KNOWN AS THE DEADLANDS.Here, bioengineered Corpse Worms rain from the blood-streaked sky, reanimating the dead. And here, atomic weapons have created legions of mutants, primeval monsters, and wild chaotic weather patterns.Enter: John Slaughter. Hardcore outlaw biker. Blood member of the Devil's Disciples. A very wanted man. Captured by the army, the feds want him to lead a gang...

Charlie Petty is a man known for having ice water in this veins. He never backs down and is never shaken but unfortunately stirred up into the wrong crowd. As a degenerate gambler, his luck has run out and his debt has now come due.Charlie is offered a chance to clear his tab: simply stay alone on a ship overnight to prove to its owner and potential crew that it's not cursed nor haunted. Never mind the ship's history of suicide, violence, mutiny and murder. Or how the ship's past c...

Five months after her sister Gloria disappeared, Kitty Seevers receives a lock of Gloria's hair in the mail. No return address. Just a cryptic message that brings Kitty to the Bamboo Lounge and into the twisted realm of ventriloquist Ronny McBane and his dummy, Piggy.Kitty descends into a haunted place where reality is frayed, where the puppetmaster and puppet seem to have reversed roles—a nightmare place where a dummy moves and speaks when his master is nowhere near him.Ki...

Six friends are returning home from a night out when they end up in a town called Stokes. They discover they are trapped there, as Stokes does not really exist. The actual town had burned to the ground more than fifty years ago. The Stokes they are in is a nightmare version of the former town, engineered by a deranged and undead mind, a supernatural machine of wrath that will destroy them one by one … unless they submit to its dominance and become living dolls.

Shaddock Valley. A maximum security prison that houses the worst of the worst: drug gangs, psychopaths, rapists, gangters, and outlaw bikers. In a place like that, a skinny little kid like Danny Palmquist doesn't stand a chance. It doesn't take long before the hardtimers move in on him.Then they begin to die horribly.In locked cells.When the lights go out at Shaddock Valley, the nightmare begins. When Danny Palmquist goes to sleep, something else wakes up.So...

It comes out of the night. It kills with animal stealth and viciousness, but with an almost human capacity for cruelty and sadism.And this time, it has left a witness.Jim Duchane watched it kill his two best friends. Now tormented by their deaths and skeptical of his own memories of that awful night, he is approached by two fringe monster hunters who are desperate to track the beast. With his help, they will hunt down a monster of Native American folklore whose very existen...

In the midst of a beautiful summer, in a perfectly American suburban middle-class neighborhood, a faraway evil is lurking, waiting to strike the unsuspecting residents.First come the flashing lights, then the heavy rains, high winds, and finally a total blackout. But that's only the beginning…When the whipping black tentacles fall from the sky and begin snatching people at random, the denizens of Piccamore Way must discover the terrifying truth of what these beings have pla...

The dark feast is ready. The cauldron is smoldering. Ladle yourself a full of bowl of Bone Marrow Stew and savor every mouthful of gut and grue, every crawling strand of meat and maggoty bite of flesh. The gravy is thick, rich, and noxious, blood-seeped and foul beyond measure. The aroma that of bone dust and corpse slime, insects and puppet eyes, snake oil and the bile of resurrection. Finish every last drop. You have been warned.Stories included in this collection:REIGN OF...