In Leeds, people at the Look Diner await their meals. They are drawn there by something greater than hunger, stronger than the need for shelter. The waitresses hustle, cooks sharpen knives. Something is stirring by the whirling ceiling fans. And we have a corner booth … front row seats.
The name Abrecan Geist evokes dangerous magic and unspeakable blasphemies. Rumors surround him. Supposedly three hundred fifty-eight years old, dying in 1982, the ability to converse with birds. Geist and his coven, the Hilltown Ten, ultimately responsible for the murders of priests and multiple disappearances in the early 1980s. Geist could bend reality to suit his whims. In his later years, his dreams took hold, warping reality while he slept.
And something is going to happen tonight. Something devilish, unnatural. We will all play a part. And though we’re mere observers, we may not make it through the night. The lights are flickering, the yolks of the eggs on my plate are filling with blood. Don’t look away … don’t even blink.
Sit tight. Soon all will be revealed.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Matthew M Bartlett has created his own unnatural world in Leeds, Massachusetts, and we’re all the better for it. The author of Gateways to Abomination, Creeping Waves, Are You There Cthulhu? It’s Me, Matthew, Music of the Moldering/If It Bleeds, and The Stay-Awake Men & Other Unstable Entities, Bartlett’s short fiction has graced the pages of such publications as Lost Signals, Occult Detective Magazine, Behold the Undead of Dracula, and Tales From a Talking Board, to name a few. With his latest, Bartlett proves once again he is a genre unto himself, grabbing readers by the throat for another trip through the nightmarish town of Leeds. Molly Tanzer (Vermilion, Creatures of Will and Temper) says: “Not all writers are storytellers, but Matthew M. Bartlett sure is. The Obsecration will draw you in with its first unsettling sentence and hold you rapt and breathless until its last unnerving image.”, and John Langan (Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies) says: “All of the ingredients of a 1980s-style horror blockbuster are here: a small town setting, multiple points of view, a cast of outsiders, a sinister henchman, a malevolent villain whose return threatens the end of everything. Bartlett boils them down to a thick broth of Grand Guignol gore, psychological disintegration, and cosmic nihilism. … Hieronymus Bosch, Lucio Fulci, Thomas Ligotti, and Stephen King are just some of the apostles elbowing for position around the table, but at its center sits Matthew Bartlett, his head surrounded by a halo of flies.”
Forthcoming from Broken Eye Books 3 October 2023, The Obsecration by Matthew M. Bartlett is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA