He walked steadily, feeling them behind him. His stride did not falter; he pretended they weren’t there. He pretended that all was well–that those hideous things knew nothing about what he had done earlier in the night. But each pumpkin he passed nearly leapt off its porch or railing or wooden chair, expanded and morphed and throbbed as if in a funhouse mirror, and joined the procession behind him. The wind picked up, suddenly and fiercely, and construction paper decorations adorning the houses that surrounded him flapped helplessly against their doors and windows. The man ducked against the cold wind, and from the pursuing army of the jack-o’-lanterns behind him. Cardboard skeletons with fastener joints and witches with shredded yarn hair and ghosts with cotton ball sheets and black crayon eyes escaped their thumbtacks and scotch tape and newspaper twine and they flashed and danced in his face. He brushed at them desperately with his hands, attempting to tear a hole through them and escape. J. Tonzelli
Quiet people have the loudest minds.
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Stephen King
The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.
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Aberjhani
And one thing we know is real: horror. It is so real, in fact, that we cannot be sure it could not exist without us. Yes, it needs our imaginations and our consciousness, but it does not ask or require our consent to use them....
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Thomas Ligotti
[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.
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Clive Barker
The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain physical miracle could ever be. But never mind that. The important thing was that, when I did see the stars (riotously darting in all directions according to the caprice of...
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Olaf Stapledon
More Quotes By J. Tonzelli
I hate this night. I hate that it makes me a person so truly removed from the real me; this man who sits in silence in his parlor — purposely quarantined from his family — is not who I want to be. But on Halloween...
I’m an old man, now. I’ve been alone since my 17th birthday. I’d wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus–...
As the thing came closer, what was left of Nick’s body became revealed and I could see how the dead boy’s eyes had bled from the trauma inflicted upon him; they dripped with steady succession onto the floor between his splayed legs. He looked like...
The last clear thought I have is of my grandmother’s rust-colored wall clock ticking away in the darkness of my apartment–my sanctuary where I dreamed and desired and hoped for goodness and love. I wonder how long that clock will tick without anyone around to...
He walked steadily, feeling them behind him. His stride did not falter; he pretended they weren’t there. He pretended that all was well–that those hideous things knew nothing about what he had done earlier in the night. But each pumpkin he passed nearly leapt off...
