Writer Stephen Mark Rainey has done it again with this brilliantly scary short story collection. Forgoing my usual sit down and read the whole book method I decided to read one or two stories a night before bed. Needless to say my dreams/nightmares were quite something for a while there. A few times I even had to get up and find something innocuous to read in order to scrub my brain out after a particularly scary tale so I could relax enough to fall asleep. This didn’t always work.

The stories and tone of the book put me in mind of Stephen King’s early short story collections. While I didn’t love every single one, most of them kept me sufficiently chilled; definitely worth the price of admission. A few highlights:

Fugue Devil: My favorite in the collection. I hesitate to tell you too much about this one because if you know about the fugue devil, well, then it knows about YOU. And you don’t want that, at all.

Silhouette: I had read an excerpt of this story some time ago and had been completely creeped out so I was thrilled to finally be able to read it in it’s entirety. If you’re anything like me and inanimate objects moving under some strange power terrify you than this story will not disappoint.

Rapture in Black: Nothing bad ever happens to the smart, hip, beautiful woman in the story right? Right? For fans of Lovecraftian monsters.

The Devil’s Eye: The sequel to Fugue Devil that’s everything you expect from a sequel, including the amped up gore.

I highly recommend you read this book but I wouldn’t recommend you read it before bedtime unless your significant other actually likes being woken up by you telling them you just read a scary story and can’t sleep and did they hear that noise and why are they looking at you like that?