The best horror short story collections and anthologies from Next Chapter [March 2023]
The horror short story genre has been a popular form of entertainment for centuries. Short horror stories are known for their ability to create a sense of dread and suspense in a short amount of time. These stories are designed to make the reader feel scared, uncomfortable, or uneasy in a matter of minutes.
Many famous authors have contributed to the horror short story genre over the years. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous horror short story writers, known for his macabre and suspenseful tales. Other notable writers include H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Shirley Jackson, among many others.
Horror short story collections are often made up of several stories that share a common theme or style. This format allows readers to enjoy a variety of horror stories in one book. Horror short stories can range from psychological thrillers to ghost stories to tales of the supernatural, making them a versatile and exciting genre for readers who enjoy being scared. Overall, the horror short story genre continues to captivate and terrify readers of all ages and backgrounds.
If you’re looking for a quick scary read, you’re in the right place. We’ve collected some of Next Chapter’s best horror short story collections and anthologies below, as of March 2023. Whether you prefer the supernatural or the psychological variety, we think any of the books here will fit the bill.
If you enjoy one of the stories below, please don’t forget to leave the author a review! Don’t agree with our choices? Please leave a comment and let us know your favorite :)
Monstrosity by Laura Diaz De Arce
Book excerpt
I do not remember those hours. I cannot tell you what happened, it is a black spot in my memory, but I remember what caused it. I know it was my fault because I made myself this way. I made myself this way because I had no choice.
They say these things come from the parents, but I do not think that is the truth. My parents, they did not have what I had. We were nothing alike, or at least I thought we were nothing alike. Mama and Papa were the cool of freshly frozen ice. Even in the most excitable of situations, they were calm. I ran hot. As a toddler I did not learn to walk, I ran. I did not learn to coo and speak, I screamed. I did not play, I waged destruction. My parents' lives, while I was a youth, were clouded by my screams, my fits, my rages. It is I who put them off having other children, a fact they made clear to me in the most temperate of voices.
My childhood is filled with the memories of their attempts to tame my nature. Mama especially tired herself out in the endeavor. They put me in structured activities to find a way for me to channel my energy elsewhere. These activities and lessons did nothing to sedate me: soccer, martial arts, violin, tennis, piano, etc. These activities only gave me more fuel with which to torment them.
They tried to train my body to be less of itself. For instance, during meals I was strapped to a chair to make me stop fidgeting. I remember the coolness of my mother's fingers as she slipped the straps beneath my armpits. She was delicate, but not in a way that was concerned for my well-being. A withering presence was her nature; a nature that, looking back, I finally realized had been constructed to hide something else.
Our battles came to a head on the morning of my first period. Until then I only knew that I had an energy, a fire within. I did not have a name for it; not even when it made my face flush and my pulse race. That was that day that I came to know it, as the blood trickled down my inner thigh. There was not much, I was only thirteen, but the glide of that droplet queued something instinctual.
Rage. That was the heat beneath my skin. Anger so fine, so woven into my being that I knew that it was unnatural. This rage. This monster that slithered beneath me. That day I slammed a chair through our sliding glass door. I remember it shattering, the sound of it, the way the shards rained down like snow. There was not a scratch on me, my anger making me impenetrable. Who I was angry at, or for what, I cannot say.
When I did that, when the glass door was shattered and revealed my nature, I could have sworn I saw it. In my mother's eyes, blue eyes that rarely flinched, was a spark of that same anger. Now that I think about it, the rage that resided in my being was perhaps something I had inherited. But she, she must have learned to control it at a young age; restrict it, coat it in clay, dirt and ice such that you would not know what simmered just below the surface.
Seven For The Slab by Doug Lamoreux
Book excerpt
No, the restaurant was better than nice. It was beautiful. Wood this, leather that, lit crystal above, silver and honest-to-god china all around on table coverings looking better than her bed linens. Imagine, a tablecloth you'd want to sleep on. The her? She was Vicki Robbins. She had come, on purpose, without an invitation yet it was just then dawning on her that she didn't belong in that fancy restaurant. It showed. Her red-lipsticked mouth hung open.
“Good evening, Madame,” the la-de-da guy at the reservation podium said. “May I help you?”
He looked like a waiter only more important. Vicki knew he was the mate-er-dee (though she wasn't sure of the pronunciation and couldn't spell it). “Oh, I don't know,” she said, stumbling out of the gate. “I think so, maybe. Eh, can you tell me, is there a Mr. Canning here?”
“Monsieur Canning?” the maître d' repeated. His eyebrow jumped but fell back into place so quickly Vicki hardly noticed it. “Certainly, Madame,” he continued. “He is expecting you.”
“Well, I'm not sure that he is.” Vicki's smile quavered. “Actually, I'm sure that he isn't.” She was off to the races. “He might be. Well, not expecting me, I don't mean that. He's expecting somebody else. But he might be glad I came. Maybe.”
The maître d' stared, this time without reacting at all. He wasn't paid to react. Instead, he snapped his fingers, pointed at a near-twin who slid silently behind the podium in his place and, smiling pleasantly at the young woman, passed his hand toward the dining room. “Please, follow me.”
They passed a guy in a monkey suit playing a piano. It was nice but nothing to line dance to. Then Vicki saw him, for the second time that day, just beyond the maître d's arm. He was a good-looking man with bad-looking hair, dark and very like the business end of a bottle brush – but with kind eyes, an expensive blue suit, and shoes without scuffs featuring neither a brand name nor a swish, seated by himself at a table set for two. Yeah, it was Mr. Canning, all right. He looked up as they arrived, smiling, but with questions in his eyes. The maître d' reached for the chair opposite. “Madame.”
“S'cuse me,” Vicki said, laying her hand on his lapel. “I better not sit yet. I don't know if he'll want me to.” She turned to the man at the table. “Mr. Canning, you don't know me.” Vicki hurried her speech on before he had her chased out. “You might recognize me, 'cause you saw me at your doctor's office this morning. I'm Vicki Robbins. I, eh, file medical records for the doctor, the doctor you saw today, Dr. Lundgren. I was there when you left. Really, I was there when you came in too, which I guess is more important, 'cause that's when you asked the receptionist, Donna Rogers, little blonde, split-ends, if she'd have dinner with you tonight. And she said yes, then you asked her to meet you here at The Vineyard.” Vicki turned to tell the maître d', “You have a beautiful restaurant, by the way,” because when you're making a fool of yourself, you need all the friends you can get.
“Merci. Thank you, Madame.”
“You're welcome, I'm sure.” She returned to Mr. Canning as if she'd never left. “But then, after you left, Donna realized she couldn't make it. So, well, here I am. I mean, I'm Vicki and, if you want me… I mean, if you wouldn't mind my taking her place, I'd love to have dinner with you—instead.” She caught her breath, then added, “Donna chews with her mouth open.”
Christmas Evil by Mark L’Estrange
Book excerpt
Janice let out a deep sigh of exhaustion as she turned onto the winding country road which would take her to her last drop-off of the day.
She blamed herself partly for still being on the road this late in the evening.
When she had set off that morning at 7 o’clock she had promised herself a short run before heading home for a hot bath and then heading onto her Aunty Vanessa’s annual Christmas Eve shindig.
Her aunt’s Christmas Eve dos were legendary in their family, and Janice could still remember being taken there as a child by her parents. All the kids would be allowed to stay up late and dance and eat until they were stuffed. Then one by one they would all start to collapse with fatigue before being carried away to Vanessa’s spare room, which she had converted into a huge dormitory with beds crushed up against each other so that all the kids could sleep together.
Now as one of the grown-ups Janice could look forward to a sumptuous spread with copious amounts of alcohol and dancing and partying into the early hours with all her cousins whom she had not seen for ages.
To her it was the perfect way to see in Christmas, and like most of her family she began looking forward to it at the beginning of the month.
But her plans for an early finish were never going to come to fruition, especially not on Christmas Eve.
Every delivery she made was welcomed with an offer of either a glass of sherry or a nice cup of tea. And though Janice had to refuse the alcohol due to being on the road, she found it increasingly harder to deny her old dears the pleasure of her company long enough for them to put the kettle on.
Even if she refused the numerous offers of mince pies and Christmas cake, she still felt too guilty to just knock back her tea and run. Even using the genuine excuse that she had several more deliveries to make and that people were depending on her, some of her customers were set to spend the festive season alone and she was probably the last person they would see during the festive season.
That by itself created a guilt-trip which Janice could not simply shrug off.
With each subsequent visit taking longer than the previous one, it did not take long for Janice to fall way behind her schedule.
Dolly Biters - The Vampire Girls Of Victorian London by Paul Voodini
Book excerpt
What was it like, you may wonder, to live in Spitalfields and to hunt humans and drink their blood? Well, let me tell you. But first I must explain a little about our situation, we vampire girls of Spitalfields. Although the human population of London may have referred to us as Dolly Biters, amongst ourselves and the other gangs of the East End we were known as the Brick Lane Irregulars. Irregular, you see, because we weren't normal, at least not as far as the humans were concerned. We were vampires – different, odd, irregular. We ruled Spitalfields, and Brick Lane was the shining jewel in our crown. The old East End was, of course, full of human street gangs, young men mainly, running riot, fighting with each other, picking pockets or snatching bags, doing over drunks and mug-hunting. Some of them, one or two, were more organised and dabbled in prostitution and poncing and extortion. There were the Yiddishers next door to us in Whitechapel, the Clockwork Oranges over in Aldgate, the Arabian Nights in Mile End, the Dicky Parrots in the old Jago, and coming towards us like an unstoppable steam train, the Holmes Boys of the Baskerville Estate. But more, much more, on those particular cunts later.
None of the human gangs, up to that point, bothered us and we didn't bother them back. We all knew each other's territories, and we respected the boundaries. For us, Brick Lane from Booth Street south to Old Montague Street and all the rat runs and rookeries to the east were ours, our main source of both blood and money. I estimated that there were three or four dozen of us all told, living in the terraced houses of Chicksand Street, some as young as twelve or fourteen with the eldest being perhaps in their early thirties, all frozen in time at the exact moment that they were turned, never ageing, constantly looking for blood and fearing the sun. Some, like Raffles, had been turned a hundred years or more ago, while most, like me, were more recent creations. The experienced looked after the new, showed them how the game worked, handed on knowledge and wisdom, and by such co-operation ensured that none were taken and killed by the mortals and their police and governments and churches. Despite what the Prime Minister may have assured my father all those months ago (and it felt like a lifetime ago to me), the vermin of Spitalfields were not 'contained'. They ruled it, just as assuredly as Queen Victoria herself ruled over the British Empire. Only a fool ventured into Spitalfields after dark, but venture they did, and we took them, and here is how.
Amaranthine and Other Stories by Erik Hofstatter
Book excerpt
“We plotted the ceremony for six weeks,” I confessed, avoiding the detective’s judgemental glare and listening to his porcine snorts. With one hand, he rubbed his shiny forehead. With the other, his meaty fingers clutched the pen—scribbling with hectic strokes. “Go on, boy, tell me exactly what happened that night.”
And so I did. I’d undergone a recent spiritual rebirth. I was a Christian now and had to confess my sins, right?
The three of us revered heavy metal, satanic bands in particular. James’s basement was our chapel and we headbanged in there religiously after school. Cradle of Filth, Behemoth, Slayer, Dimmu Borgir—you name it. We worshipped the lyrics and basked in the subliminal darkness they invoked. We even dabbled in music ourselves. James pestered me and Randy to help him with the ritual. He claimed it would benefit our own band.
“How exactly?” Randy asked.
Postmortem blasted in the background as James lit a bowl of meth, his face disappearing in a cloud of blinding smoke.
“Think about it! We’d receive power from the Devil! He’d help us play the guitar even better! We’d gain more craziness to go professional, know what I mean?”
I didn’t, but the speculation caught my curiosity.
“I marked the grave last night so you two douches are still up for it, yeah?” James said.
I took a blow of meth and relaxed, letting the ecstasy rush through my head—dominating the senses.
“Yeah, let’s do it tonight. You got the equipment, right?” Randy said.
“Sure, sure.” I nodded.
There we have it: the best horror short story collections and anthologies from Next Chapter in 03/2023. We hope you enjoy the stories - and if you do, please leave a comment below, or a review in Goodreads or your favorite store. It would mean a lot to us!
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