“Whispers In The Dark: Three Stories Of Terror”

Imagine Chico writer N.J. Hanson penning a scary story about a writer penning a scary story about “a man who moves into a new house, one he gets for a very reasonable price, which is also haunted by the spirits of the family that was murdered there.” Imagine further that the writer penning about the spirits finds on a stormy night that he, too, must deal with one of those spirits because of the pen he is penning with.

Hanson’s story is called “Inked In Blood,” one of a triad of tales perfectly pitched for the pumpkin season. “Whispers In The Dark: Three Stories Of Terror” ($6.95 in paperback from Ink Drop Press; also for Amazon Kindle) also includes “Roadside” and “Wingbeats In The Night.” 

“Roadside” is about just desserts, some might say. It begins gruesomely enough: “With a heave and a groan, he threw the body off the bridge and watched it splash in the river below. The concrete cinder block tied to it quickly pulled the corpse down to the bottom, where the dead girl’s arms, legs, and hair listed almost delicately in the current. … The man got back into his truck, the old engine of his ’73 Chevy rumbled to life when he turned the key, threw it in gear, and drove away. It was time to find a new girl.”

It ends, as one might guess, gruesomely enough.

The longest story, “Wingbeats In The Night,” takes the narrator to Mexico “to visit ancient sites of Aztec and Mayan ruins. … I planned a trip to visit the ancient city of the Sun Pyramid.” Big mistake, actually. His guide is a sketchy character but the narrator’s intense interest in the legends of these cultures drives him onward. 

The “bat god of the underworld, Camazotz,” “a human-bat hybrid,” is on the pyramid above the image of “a man held down by his arms and legs across a sacrificial altar, his chest cut open, and his heart held towards the sky in the hands of a priest”—but, this being the diabolical Hanson, it isn’t just ancient history.

Close the shutters and make way for the shudders.