Faces in the Dark

A collection of short stories of paranoid horror.

A girl begins to question why she and her parents wear monstrous masks they have never, ever taken off, though she may have been better off not knowing. An insomniac spends every night watched by a dark, silent figure in the bedroom, and while this figure disappears by morning, he seems to be growing stronger and bolder. It turns out that when things go missing, spidery little creatures with the missions of disarray and madness, gathering and harvesting are to blame; humanity has deeply wronged them, and between their antics they've been planning a much more sinister revenge.

These and several other horror stories await in Set Sytes's new collection, which includes The Violet Dark, an unsettling, dreamy (or nightmare-y, rather) novella revolving around an addictive drink.

About the Author

Set Sytes was born in the misty, Arthurian woods of England and was raised by bears. He grew up learning how to do and be many things at the same time, including slaying monsters, rescuing damsels in distress (who turned out to be neither in distress nor, in fact, damsels), and commanding great armies (the strategy involved inevitably being "everybody charge at the enemy").

As the Real World struck with a calamitous clang, Set was found wandering around in the desolate aftermath, completely uncertain about what was now expected of him. He faffed and stumbled around for an embarrassingly long time (sometimes failing quite spectacularly) and then finally turned his hand to the only thing he remembered being any good at as a kid: writing.

He was relieved to break the curse of never having finished anything in his life, when he finished his first novel. Which was okay-ish. Set has since authored many stories of darkness and weirdness and flights of fancy, including the sci-fi/fantasy/western novel WULF, the YA pirate fantasy India Bones and the Ship of the Dead, the thoroughly twisted dystopian thriller Moral Zero, and the fantasy/horror short story collections of Faces in the Dark and Born to be Weird. Set requests politely that you don't put onions anywhere near his food.