People ask me why I write horror stories.

My first thought is: why doesn’t anyone write anything? That sounds snippy. What I mean is, the first instinct is to write. Or it is for me.

Get the words down. About whatever happens to be on my mind. Right, that’s the first bit.

Now, the horror.

It comes down to this. In storytelling, thrillers and all that? The good guys win in the end. That’s always annoyed me. Life isn’t like that. But also, I reckon veering to the dark side means, I can focus on survival. Because in the end, that’s what a proper horror story is. Nobody has to win. The protagonist survives, if they are lucky. But they’ll be forever changed.

That’s horror. Pure and simple. A damn good yarn — with monsters.

My influences are two-fold.

First: Mr James Herbert. If there was ever an author that knew how to tell a story while scaring the bejayus out of you, it was James.

Second: Mr Shaun Hutson. He’s had no problem letting the monsters dig themselves out of graves and set about the local populace. And the detail. Shaun provides medical wounding details like no other author I’ve ever read. But, he also spins a damn good yarn.

See?

The common denominator? Not blood and gore. Sure, they’re there. But storytelling.

And on that note, let me introduce my storytelling assistant. I invented him for a story and he stuck around. He’s from the year 1646. The time of the English civil war. So, he speaks in that manner.

Hark thee, Andy, and attend, for I shall not speak this twice, nor suffer thy dullness a third time.

Thou askest how I draw the black matter from thee. How I make thee set down upon the page those horrors thou wouldst rather leave sleeping in the cellar of thy mind. I shall tell thee plainly. As I told the goodwives of Bury St Edmunds and the trembling elders of Manningtree afore my masters Hopkins and Stearne rode in.

The method is ever the same. I come unto a village. Or in thy case, unto the soft chambers of thy imagination, and I do not permit comfort. I sit in the alehouse. I listen. I ask the question that maketh a man’s eye twitch and a woman’s hand go to her throat. I stir the pot that was already boiling, Andy, mark me well, I do not create the darkness. ’Tis there already, squatting in every heart like a toad in a milk-pail. I merely refuse to let thee look away from it.

Thou hast a tendency, a weakness, I call it, to draw the curtain when the scene groweth foul. Thou writest of blood and then thou dost flinch. Thou conjurest a shadow and then thou dost light a candle to chase it hence.

This I will not abide. When I prepared a parish for the General’s arrival, I did not let the folk retreat into their prayers and their small assurances. Nay. I held their faces to the glass. I made them name the thing they feared most, and then I made them name it louder. So it is with thy writing. I will not let thee soften the blow. I will not let thee grant thy readers — nor thyself — the mercy of an averted gaze. Look straight on at the horror. The same as viewing a corpse at the laying-out, with the eyes open and the mouth sewn shut and the truth of it undeniable.

And as for thy sloth, aye, I see thee slouching even now. Ready to set down thy quill and declare the day’s labour finished when thou hast scarce begun to bleed upon the page. Dost thou think the Devil keepeth hours? Dost thou think the things that crawl in the dark pause because thou art weary? They do not. And neither shall I. Thou shalt write, Andy, though thy fingers ache and thy candle gutters and the hour groweth monstrous. Thou shalt write until the words come out black and true and stinking of the earth. As a confession wrung from a witch at the third night of watching.

I have broken harder souls than thine in lesser time. I went before Hopkins into villages where men swore no devilry dwelt. And within a fortnight they were dragging their own neighbours to the stool. I know how to find what some try to hide away. I know how to make it speak. And it is in your head that I now live, Andy, and I shall not leave by thy whimpering nor thy excuses.

So take up thy pen. The village is not yet prepared. The dark is not yet deep enough. And I am not yet satisfied.

Write.

Thanks, Tobias. He’s a hard taskmaster. But now you know why I write horror stories.