Spanning more than 90 years of art from across the globe, this collection of short stories celebrates the fictional character in all its horrors, from the oil monster of FernGully to the demon kings of Blue Exorcist's Gehenna. Beginning with the bla...
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The cloud cover had swallowed the sky in a veil of fog and torrential darkness, but on nights when the crickets sang no more and the frogs kept to the water, it parted under the patchwork of stars waiting to twinkle at the unconscious countryside.
The moon's eye skirted the ribbons of a tattered curtain and fluttered across the wooden frame set atop a bedside table, which bore the crumpled photograph of a family. Those rising curves of joy on their lips, the same assault of happiness his brother oozed like the sun bled heat, drew a low hiss from deep within Nightmare.
The thrashes of a tentacle or two whipping the air overhead punctuated the rumbling crackle rolling between his gritted teeth. Every second he brooded, the shadows of lamps, bedposts, and a chest of drawers thickened and stretched farther. The room grew dank and instinct with pressure until breathing was akin to having a pair of hands wrap around your neck and squeeze.
That facial atrocity had a name; smiles, he recalled, but even the word repulsed him like the acrid stink of vomit. It conjured up visions of two siblings reclining under the shade of a tree swaying with bountiful leaves, of promises made and then broken, of a schism between brother and brother, light and dark.
You played among the joyful souls in the photograph and shared in their touches and sandwiches, looking a far different person than the heap of sweat and nerves turning over in your bed. Nightmare allowed his gaze to linger for a bemused instant before the pull of that bitter edge lurking in his every thought called him back to the happy little fools and their sepia stares.
The willingness with which they shoved at him a sick buoyancy defied his power and mocked his work. The urge to tear that lightsomeness away from them and plunge them into misery began to burn within him, spurring his tentacles to writhe until one whacked the picture frame off the table.
It flew into a spinning collision course with the wall and caromed off it to crack the peace of a fitful sleep. The battered frame thudded against the hardwood floor, lying face down in a pool of glass shards.
You jumped into a scrambled consciousness at the clamour like a cannonade, and your eyes, encrusted with an awkward mix of bleary and vigilant, swept the room in anticipation of some calamity. Motionless and impregnable darkness, perfect camouflage for any terrors, met your search rather than the feared intruder charging through the door or the tremors of an earthquake.
Howling winds raged past your walls and produced a sustained groan approaching something human, a cruel and grotesque imitation of a lost soul calling out. Each gust tapped the windows like the fingers of someone asking to be invited in from the cold.
