Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron

You can find “Gotcha!” in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, “Occultation” in Occultation, and “The Bedroom Light” in The Drowned Life, by Ray Bradbury, Laird Barron, and Jeffrey Ford, respectively. I hope I’ve convinced you to read these three tales. “Fuck that,” he said but started to get up. “Come on? I’ve gotten the damn light every night for the past two weeks.” She began to doze off, but before her eyes closed all the way, she said, “Who’s getting the light?” They kissed and then lay quiet, both listening to the sound of the leaves blowing outside. The world had descended into a primeval well while she’d been partying in their motel room it had slipped backward and now the desert truly was an ancient and haunted place.Īnd from Jeffrey Ford’s “The Bedroom Light” : The night remained preternaturally quiet there on the edge of the highway, absent the burr of distant engines or blatting horns, or the stark sweep of rushing headlights. Thought it had wings earlier, but I dunno.

You know, that thing does resemble an insect. …and the face peering down at him so full of evil glee, so brimful of malevolence, so beyond this world and in another, so alien, so strange, so never seen before, that he had to shriek again… When they were finished with the amazing omelet they went back to staring and making noises.Īt breakfast about one year into the conniption fits Beth said, half under her breath: “Gotcha.” He looked up and said, “What?” “Gotcha,” she said. Writing with a poet's eye for detail and a folklorist's understanding of mythos, Barron lives up to his reputation for elegant, subtle, and nightmare-inducing tales with a Lovecraftian edge in his second short story collection (after 2007's The Imago Sequence and Other Stories), which includes six reprints and three original stories. When they weren’t kissing they were a dozen scrambled eggs in bed. When they weren’t hugging they were kissing. When they weren’t staring at each other they were hugging. I don’t want to give too much away, but consider the following quotes: These are three of the creepiest short stories I have ever read. But Ray Bradbury, Laird Barron, and Jeffrey Ford take this ordinary scenario and create something truly horrifying. You’re in bed with your significant other, someone you care for very much.

Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron