"The New Daughter" by John Connolly, published in Nocturnes, Hodder & Stoughton, London, ISBN 0340834587, c.2004.

Connolly writes the neo-noirish, hard-boiled detective series with paranormal twists following slewfoot Charlie "The Bird" Parker. This story proves there's still chills in old-style possession yarns. More classic stuff is found in "The Underbury Witches", and don't miss "The Furnace Room" for contemporary eeriness.

“Yahuara” by Nicola Griffith, published in Little Deaths, 24 Tales of Sex and Horror , edited by Ellen Datlow, Orion Books UK, ISBN 185798014X, c.1994

Yahuara means a “predator that kills its prey in one bound” (p.128), in this case, a South American jaguar. This is a marvelous, transformative story unfolding in the jungles of Belize around a minor Mayan ruin. The first-person protagonist is a quasi-celebrity going anal over her privacy who decides to hide by photographing a strong-woman, Latina American anthropology professor obsessed with discovering ancient Mayan metamorphosis rituals from mysterious runes outside a small, native village. Dr. Cleis Fernandez does the physical shape-shifting while our female narrator breaks through her own self-feeding fears and defense mechanisms. In the midst of it all, a baby is born. The intellectual melding into the feral perspective is particularily fascinating. After all, “the forest is a siren” (p.149).

"Dancing Men" by Glen Hirshberg, published in The Two Sams, Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0786712554, c.2003

Hirshberg deals with very damaged people, usually children or teenagers, in a very equivocal--and possibly supernatural--manner. In this story, a young boy unwittingly faces the horrors of his heredity, and, while providing clues for unadjusted answers, it also becomes the burden of his life, as the revelation is that "the world won't be yours anymore" (p.162). Also, peruse "Shipwreck Beach" for its phenomenal atmospherics that emulate the inner anguish of its characters. While Hirshberg can be a very intense storyteller, he can also be quite maudlin, as exampled by the title story.

"The Gift" by John Steinbeck, published in The Red Pony, Viking, c.1937

This is the first chapter in an episodic novella, and certainly stand-alone. It is the gut-wrenching story about a boy raising a colt, and, in the process, learning the painful lesson that personal responsibility is absolute, even under the influence of authority figures. Steinbeck exacts emotional payment with every teardrop. If you can take more, follow with chapter four, "The Promise". This is primer for an even tougher curriculm called Of Mice And Men.

"A Little Night Music" by Lucius Shepard, published in Barnacle Bill the Spacer, and Other Stories, Orion, c.1997, story c.1992

I always fall for these stories where the protagonist metamorphizes into something extraordinary, like a shapeshifter or, in this case, a zombie. Here, its music that's the conduit, irrevocably altering the viewpoint as it offers quite a tempting lifestyle away from all the stress and hassle of modern living. Read it while listening to Miles' Bitches Brew.

"The Elf-King" by Elizabeth Hand, published in Last Summer at Mars Hill, HarperPrism TPB, c.1998, story c.1993.

An old-fashioned haunting lushly swept in the visual and audio atmospherics of an aging rock star's fungoid mansion. Re-animating the horrors hidden in ancient children's fables as pounced-upon by the celebratory, '60s youth mesmerized by Warhol's Factory culture of life-as-suicide, the tainted detrius is still veining through the addictions of today. Old horrors apparently never die as long as new victims are offered for feeding.

And, while you're here, don't miss the maudlin but magnificent Snow on Sugar Mountain, girls gone feral in Bacchae, and the haunting mesmerization of the title story, Last Summer at Mars Hill.

"Holes" by Sarah Clemens, published in Little Deaths: 24 Tales of Horror and Sex, edited by Ellen Datlow, Millennium UK, c.1994.

Involving body piercing and tattoos, this is about pain and sex, but not of the S&M variety. It's got spells and hexes, but more about physical abuse standing in for the deeper, more insidious mental torment. If you don't know what an ampallang is, look it up before engaging this story.

"Twilla" by Tom Reamy, published in San Diego Lightfoot Sue & Other Stories, Earthlight Publishers, c.1979.

Horror invariably follows well-worn paths. Within that boundary, this story reads like a movie script in its chosen details, but with a creepy, Bad Seed-like antagonist conjugated to an even worse Summoning that stumps the country folk with its sexually-disemboweling murders. The viewpoint is from that tight-haired, goggled and spinster-ish teacher we all had in the third grade.