I want this to be a platform for EVERYONE within the horror community; authors, publishers, bloggers, reviewers, actors, directors, artists. I could go on, if you work in the genre then you are more than welcome to apply for the job.
The rules are quite simple…
You are invited to imagine yourselves as warden for an old graveyard, and choose eight books, preferably horror/dark genre, to take with you to cover your shift; here you can discuss why you chose the books.
As well as the books, wardens are allowed one song/album to listen to. Again, an explanation for this choice is required.
You must also discuss one luxury item you can bring, which must be inanimate and not allow communication.
If you’d like to take part in The Graveyard Shift then please submit an application to gavin@kendallreviews.com
A new shift is about to begin. The warden for the week’s #GraveyardShift is…
Matthew Lyons
They say never go into the woods at night…
School’s out for summer and that means one thing to Parker, Chloe, and their four friends: a well-deserved camping trip in the Pine Barrens, a million-acre forest deep in the heart of New Jersey. But when old grudges erupt, an argument escalates into the unthinkable, leaving one of them dead and the killer missing. As darkness descends and those left alive try to determine a course of action, the forest around them begins to change…
In the morning, more of the group has vanished and the path that led them into the woods is gone―as if consumed by the forest itself. Lost and hungry, the remaining friends set out to find help, only to realize that the forest seems to have other plans―a darker, ancient horror lies dead and dreaming in a lake in the center of the woods. And it’s calling to them.
Meanwhile, deep in the trees, the killer is still at large, and one of the group’s own has started to transform and warp into something other. Something inhuman. Something that wants to feast.
Banding together to survive, the friends soon begin to understand the true nature of the horror waiting for them in the Pine Barrens―and that not all of them will make it out alive.
You can buy The Night Will Find Us from Amazon UK & Amazon US
So this is the graveyard, huh? It’s nice, I like what you’ve done with the place. The cobwebs and candles and skulls add a real ambience. Those… those aren’t real, are they? Wait, why are you laughing like that?
Okay, look, I’ve definitely had some weird gigs in my time, and while night warden of a place like this might definitely be the weirdest, I’m not exactly complaining. I like weird. And hey, if I’m going to be here from dusk to dawn, I’m going to make damn sure I enjoy it.
After all, passing time should never just be passing time.
Ultimately, that’s the rule that I held to as I started to put together my shift kit. I want scares, I want beauty, I want art, but more than anything, I want things that are going to staple me to my seat and hold me there until they’re done with me. Those are the best kind of stories to while away nights like this one with, aren’t they? So let’s see what we can dig up tonight.
Books
The Between by Tananarive Due
Honestly, it was hard to pick just one Tananarive Due book to bring with me, because everything she writes is pretty much amazing; but for my money, her debut novel The Between is hard to beat. A ghost story, a family thriller and much, much more, it’s a book that’s so goddamned scary on almost every page, and certainly not always because of the threat of the supernatural.
It also does something that a lot of lesser horror swings at but ultimately strikes out on: treating serious mental health issues with all the care and humanity in the world while also mining scare after scare from them. Making something that complex look fantastically easy takes a deft hand, and Due did it in her first novel, in 1995. Just think about that for a second.
For that reason, and so, so many others, we should all be Tananarive Due fans.
The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson
Of all the books I’ve read this year, The Boatman’s Daughter might be the one that’s stuck with me the most. It’s a novel that deals with legacies and family in ever-more complex and harrowing ways. Ambitious in scope but frighteningly intimate in execution, it will make you love the people you find within its covers, and then it will break your heart as you watch them deal with the consequences of their actions. It’s scary as hell, yeah, but somehow more than that, it’s so deeply heartfelt. Now that I think of it, it might actually be one of the most tender horror novels I’ve ever read.
Look, the fact of the matter is that Andy is a colossal talent, and that he’s legitimately one of the nicest humans on this planet is just the icing on the cake. I truly cannot wait to see what he comes up with next.
The Keeper by Sarah Langan
The first of two Langans on this list (no relation), Sarah Langan is one of those writers that inspires jealousy and awe in equal measure, and her debut The Keeper puts her immense talent on full display. What starts off as a tale of lonely, desperate people living in dying small-town America soon twists and bends itself into an altogether new and unsettling kind of nightmare unlike anything I’ve read before or since, and that’s long before she ever unleashes the sequences of absolute chaos that have been simmering under the surface since page one. Sarah Langan is a singular talent, and if you’re not eagerly awaiting every new piece that she releases into the world, you’re missing out.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Okay, HP Lovecraft was a racist asshole. Let’s just get that out of the way first. I’m personally glad as hell that we as a community are starting to reassess the man’s work, keeping the good and discarding (or otherwise straight-up eviscerating) the bad; but as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t get any better than The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle’s novella-length take on what might be Lovecraft’s most racist story (though, let’s be honest, the competition is fierce), “The Horror At Red Hook.”
I’ll avoid spoilers here, but suffice to say that LaValle’s take on the original tale is far more clever, subtle, terrifying and audacious than a bigoted edgelord like Lovecraft ever had a chance of being. Luckily for us, Victor LaValle has more than enough skill and raw talent to make it look just outrageously goddamned easy. I’ve read this book easily a half dozen times and I look forward to going through it half a dozen more.
The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike (translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm)
Some people might say that choosing to bring a book about the haunted environs surrounding a malevolent graveyard with me on my own Graveyard Shift is nothing short of madness, but I say that those naysayers haven’t read this utterly fantastic novel. If they had, they’d surely know that it’s a marvellous, creeping tale of isolation and mind-scorching terror that burrows down into the wet, sticky core of your soul and builds a nest there. I burned through this book the first time I read it, because I couldn’t not.
The Fisherman by John Langan
One of my favorite things about horror is when authors take ordinary, everyday people in ordinary, everyday situations and then push them into unfamiliar, uncanny and absolutely mind-melting territory. Almost nobody does this better than John Langan (but to be fair, you could say that about a lot of the things he does).
The Fisherman reads like a fever dream in the best way, effortlessly blending the cosmic, the ordinary and the painfully human in a gorgeously-wrought, hauntingly-relatable phantasmagoria of loss, grief and solitude that made me yearn for more, even as I recoiled in awe from the pain and terror I found lurking within. It’s lyrical, lush and absolutely weird as hell. This book is a legitimate masterpiece for so damn many reasons, not least of all because it made me remember why I like telling stories, and why I like fishing.
The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley
My jaw hung all the way open as I read The Beauty, not only because of the stomach-churning grotesqueries on full display on basically every page, but because of the humbling gorgeousness of Whiteley’s prose and the wonderfully gruesome gender-relations allegory that she puts front and center.
There’s a level of sheer what-the-fuck at work here that I’ve rarely seen matched; the fact that it all hangs together so well is nothing short of outrageous. The Beauty is profoundly cohesive in a very rare way, and the end effect is something akin to a David Cronenberg movie – except I don’t think that David Cronenberg ever went out and swung for the fences like this.
Gateways to Abomination by Matthew M. Bartlett
I’ve been tuned into WXXT since this collection of fantastically hideous nightmares first came out in 2014, and I’m proud/horrified to say that I have never once looked back. Matthew M. Bartlett is one of those writers that every writer who reads his stuff wants to be like. I know I do.
Weaving itself together in increasingly-dizzying configurations, reading Gateways to Abomination (or any of Bartlett’s work, really) is like holding a live viper in both hands with your eyes closed. You don’t know when it’s going to strike, exactly – only that it will, and when it does, it’s going to hurt.
Album
Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! by Vile Creature
Angry queer gloom cult Vile Creature released their latest record, Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! this year amidst our recent global clusterfuck, and it’s been playing on repeat in my house pretty much nonstop ever since. Haunting, poetic, brutal and stunningly gorgeous, Vile Creature has crafted something absolutely legendary here. The fact that it also super rules doesn’t hurt, either.
Listening to Vile Creature’s music is to purposefully undertake a fraught journey that carries you hurtling through the darkest depths and back toward the light, and full disclosure here, the darks are often real dark. But the darkness is there to be fought against, and it’s there to be purged from the system. The band makes no bones about the things that they believe in down to their marrow (say it with me now, trans rights are human rights), because ultimately, their beliefs and stances are part and parcel with the art that they create. I think that’s absolutely wonderful.
In their own words, “the most metal thing that you can do is care about other people.”
Words to live by, those.
Luxury Item
One bottle of Lagavulin 16-Year old Scotch Whisky
Lately, I’ve found myself in one of the busier periods of my life thus far, so I’m going to treat my time here at the graveyard as exactly what it is: a chance to have a sit and get lost in a good story (or eight). If I’m going to be working through a stack of some of my all-time favorites, I think pairing them with a bottle of my very favorite scotch in all the world would do beautifully, don’t you? Come on, it tastes like they somehow found a way to bottle the sunlight at dusk – it’s the perfect companion for a foggy, lonely night like this one.
After all, I suppose that at the end of the day, my needs are pretty simple. Give me my books, my music, and a bottle of the good stuff and I’m good until sunup.
Ah, shit, I almost forgot – can I get a glass with that, too?
The Night Will Find Us
They say never go into the woods at night…
School’s out for summer and that means one thing to Parker, Chloe, and their four friends: a well-deserved camping trip in the Pine Barrens, a million-acre forest deep in the heart of New Jersey. But when old grudges erupt, an argument escalates into the unthinkable, leaving one of them dead and the killer missing. As darkness descends and those left alive try to determine a course of action, the forest around them begins to change…
In the morning, more of the group has vanished and the path that led them into the woods is gone―as if consumed by the forest itself. Lost and hungry, the remaining friends set out to find help, only to realize that the forest seems to have other plans―a darker, ancient horror lies dead and dreaming in a lake in the center of the woods. And it’s calling to them.
Meanwhile, deep in the trees, the killer is still at large, and one of the group’s own has started to transform and warp into something other. Something inhuman. Something that wants to feast.
Banding together to survive, the friends soon begin to understand the true nature of the horror waiting for them in the Pine Barrens―and that not all of them will make it out alive.
You can buy The Night Will Find Us from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Matthew Lyons
Matthew Lyons is the author of the novel The Night Will Find Us, as well as over three dozen short stories, appearing in the 2018 edition of Best American Short Stories (edited by Roxane Gay), Tor Nightfire’s Come Join Us By The Fire (Season 2) and more. Born in Colorado, he lives in Denver with his wife and their cat.
He can be found haunting Twitter @cannibalghosts and Instagram at @cannibalghosts.
You can find out more about Matthew via his official website www.matthewlyonsauthor.com
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