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Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, please review the guidelines here.)

I am very pleased to have Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated and Locus Award-winning author Cherie Priest as my guest. Her latest novel is the highly anticipated Maplecroft. Here’s the publisher’s description:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one….”

The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.

But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.

This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Cherie Priest:

For quite some time, I’ve nursed a pet theory that there are only two great fears: (1) the fear that everyone knows something life-or-death important, and no one will tell you what it is, or (2) the fear that you know something life-or-death important, and no one will believe you. At the core of both, I suppose, is the fear of isolation and/or being left out of something, which comes around again to the age-old fear of the unknown; but the academic in me has a fondness for the symmetry of it all.

I find it both tidy, and true.

So when I approached the aftermath of the murders which Lizzie Borden may — or may not — have committed, it’s no great surprise that I was struck by the woman’s isolation. She stood at the center of a media frenzy, a town’s wrath, and a justice system’s glare . . . and she stood there more or less alone. If she didn’t do it, she sure as hell didn’t deserve the aftermath of that trial.

If she did do it, then I’m not entirely sure you could say that she got away with murder. Was formal justice served? No, but public social justice saw to it that she basically never left the house again. Entire generations learned (and assumed, and believed) she was guilty via schoolyard jump rope rhymes, for pity’s sake.

So did she kill her father and stepmother, or was she railroaded? I don’t know. Nobody does anymore, because the only person who ever knew for certain was Lizzie herself — and she’s been dead for almost a hundred years. But I was intrigued by the idea of it all, how she never spoke a word to the press, not even to defend herself; and then, when it was all over she was free to go . . . but she didn’t. She bought a house right there in that same town where public opinion had utterly condemned her, never mind the verdict.

And there, she lived out her days, more or less alone.

So I wondered, what would keep her there? She had very little family left — only an older sister who was rather infirm. She had plenty of money, having inherited the substantial Borden estate; she could’ve gone anywhere she wanted.

Maybe she was afraid.

That’s the direction I took it, anyway. I decided to go ahead and make her guilty, but to give her a damn good reason for her infamous crime — something so terrible, so great a threat, that there was nowhere she could possibly run in order to escape it . . . so she might as well stay put and fight.

Because if Lovecraft taught us anything (apart from what “Cyclopean” means in the architectural sense), he taught us to make the threat bigger than the protagonist. In Maplecroft, the threat is enormous. It comes from within, and without — from family, from lovers, and from home. It comes from the ocean, and it isn’t stopping. Maybe it can’t be stopped.

Caught in the middle is Lizzie, who knows something life-or-death important. But no one will believe her, much less help her.

And that’s the scariest part.

Cherie Priest: Website / Twitter / Facebook

Maplecroft: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound / Powell’s

Cherie Priest is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the steampunk pulp adventures of the Clockwork Century, beginning with Boneshaker. She also wrote the Cheshire Red series from Bantam-Spectra; Fathom and the Eden Moore series from Tor; and three novellas from Subterranean Press. In addition to the above, her first foray into George R. R. Martin’s superhero universe, Fort Freak (for which she wrote the interstitial mystery), debuted in the summer of 2011. Her short stories and articles have appeared in many fine periodicals and numerous anthologies; and her most recent full-length project, Maplecroft, is the story of Lizzie Borden fighting Cthulhu with an axe. Cherie lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband, a big shaggy dog, and a little old cat.

The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A heady, hallucinatory, terrifying novel that mixes horror, noir, and the cosmic weird to astonishing results. Barron has always been an intelligent and unconventional horror writer, one who understands that atmosphere and only fleeting glimpses of the horrific are this genre’s most powerful storytelling tools. In THE LIGHT IS THE DARKNESS, he has created a compelling network of characters and mysteries, a story where it’s impossible to guess the truth behind the veil or anticipate what will happen next, all permeated by an indelible sense of mounting dread and a well developed, if entirely nihilistic, worldview. Readers of brainy, imaginative, sophisticated, sublime horror will want to pick up THE LIGHT IS THE DARKNESS at their soonest opportunity.

View all my reviews

Crisis by Lee Thomas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another great novella by Lee Thomas, this time merging corporate culture with voodoo-tinged vengeance from beyond the grave. The characters are fun, the setting is way too familiar for anyone who has ever suffered through corporate life, and once things get rolling the pace is nonstop. A very enjoyable, very creepy, and very fast read.

View all my reviews

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, check out the guidelines here.)

My guest is multiple Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author S.P. Miskowski, whose latest book is the novella In the Light. Here’s the publisher’s description:

While fleeing from neighborhood bullies, a lonely girl uncovers a dark secret buried near the abandoned ruins of a house mired in local legend. Ruth hopes the charred remains that she unearths will bring a bit of magic to her life. But she’s no match for the force that dwells in this place, waiting for a chance to live again.

A displaced child neglected by affluent parents and a former preacher burdened by the tragic and scandalous circumstances of his mother’s death face a final reckoning at the hands of a woman with the power to summon good and evil.

In the Light is the final book of the Skillute Cycle, a chronicle of one fictional town and an abiding horror that lies just beneath the surface. In the woods. In the water. Beneath the ground. The time has arrived. Something evil has come home.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for S.P. Miskowski:

Recently I completed work on the Skillute Cycle, a series of books constructed around, and including, my novel, Knock Knock. This four-book series is published by Omnium Gatherum. In the three novellas that grew from the novel I’ve created a prequel, Delphine Dodd; a concurrent story, Astoria; and a sequel, In the Light. My intention has been to write four stand-alone books which, read together and in order, form a complex kaleidoscopic pattern with overlapping characters and events.

Most of the action in the series occurs in the fictional small town of Skillute, Washington. I’ve taken care to establish ways in which the town changes across time. As drastic economic changes occur, expectations and perceptions change. At the same time, I’ve chronicled the town’s underlying, mythological history. Locals tell stories of a scary creature who haunts the woods but few people realize that these stories have their origin in actual events.

Horrible things happen in Skillute, many of them triggered by a seemingly innocent game played by three girls whose only crime is boredom and frustration. The girls feel an impulse to break free of the social constraints that define their lives. This is a running theme in the series, women who find their situation unbearable and reach out or lash out, only to find they are trapped by a natural, malevolent force. Ironically, the force against which they struggle may have its origin in the very disillusionment they express, reiterated through several generations.

For me, the scariest and most daunting aspect of this cycle was returning to Skillute time and again, even though the town could sometimes be quite beautiful. I was afraid of the same things the women of Skillute fear, the long afternoons and empty nights, the loneliness which has no beginning or end, the sense that life may not have meaning beyond the ones we invent. My aim was to create a location which inspires claustrophobia and paranoia, in which reckless acts and desperate measures make sense. My growing uneasiness indicated that I had succeeded.

I’ve never lived in a small town but I spent a lot of time visiting the rural places where my parents grew up. As a child I only perceived these towns with an attitude of adventure. I saw the novelty and not the hardship. It was only after I grew up that I understood how my parents had barely managed to contain their youthful energy, and why they had run away as soon as they were old enough to do so. The picturesque and eccentric elements of small town life had masked, for me, the burden of history inherent to such a close-fitting world.

The girls of Skillute take an oath in the woods. They believe that if they can disrupt one building block in the life they are consigned to lead, the whole structure will topple and they will be free. Such are the dreams we cherish when we’re children. Escape is so much more difficult. However much we kick against the rules that shape our lives, we remain largely a product of our time and place. Real escape requires a deep understanding of where we come from and what we want, as well as an acceptance of our nature as something less pretty and more frightening than we ever imagined.

S.P. Miskowski: Goodreads

In the Light: Preorder from Amazon

S.P. Miskowski’s debut novel, Knock Knock, and her first novella, Delphine Dodd, were shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. Both books are part of The Skillute Cycle, which includes two more novellas: Astoria and In The Light. All four books are published by Omnium Gatherum Media.

Rated by Black Static book critic Peter Tennant as “one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years,” Miskowski has written short stories published in Supernatural Tales, Horror Bound Magazine, Identity Theory, The Absent Willow Review, New Times, Fine Madness, Other Voices, and the anthologies Detritus and Little Visible Delight, and in the forthcoming anthologies Cassilda’s Song edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Chaosium) and October Dreams 2 (Cemetery Dance Publications). Her work has received a Swarthout Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.