Hello.

I am Mr. Welldone.

No, just kidding, it’s Kris, the author of Ichor Falls and Candle Cove, the reason why you found me. I know the site’s been dead quiet for a long while now, and I’ve been wanting to write more horror, but I have a problem. I can’t. I’m so meta about everything nothing scares me lately. No ghost, no unseen stalking spirit, no lumbering, stitched nightmare. I feel like I understand every trope.

As you may know, traditional horror/suspense/thrillers don’t do a lot for me — for example, the Scream movies or any of their ilk. I can’t get worked up about a guy with a bladed weapon, and the reason is, I know their motive. They want to hurt me, they want me to know fear as I die. I get that, I get all of it. So when he puts the sword through the door and it startles me, now I have to fight him, and it’s just brains vs. brawn, or brawn vs. brawn, and I’m gonna lose, and he’s gonna get me. The end. It just doesn’t inspire the same feeling of dread that an alien entity does, a completely foreign state of existence like something unknown from the depths of the sea, or a haunting. That’s why they scare me so much — because to deal with something, you have to be able to form a pattern. You have to be able to begin to understand them.

I understand a serial killer. He has to conform to the laws of physics; he probably can’t break in without making a lot of noise. And if he gets me, I guess he gets me. I die. Or I get tortured and then die. Misery is terrible, but it doesn’t frighten me; the unknown frightens me. The appropriation of innocence frightens me, like you see in Candle Cove. (If you want to read what I have to say about why I did Candle Cove and its meta legacy, here’s a blog post about it.)

And attempts to frighten me, other stories — there’s a lot of good creepypasta out there that does get me, but it’s also very formulaic. The ritual ones I never understood! How can anyone be expected to remember all that stuff? Who would even bother? And usually the reward is to be cursed and miserable forever. What? Really?

Anyone here watch Suicide Mouse? That meme? I haven’t heard the audio. I just watched the first five seconds and shut it off. Why, because it was frightening? No, because it was supposedly made in the 1930s, but the animation looks like it was done in Mario Paint. Have some pride for God’s sake. Do your job, scare people. Force them to imagine a little more, don’t lay it all out on a plate. People don’t stagger out of a screening of something and raise a gun to their temples. If they do, there’s a much longer buildup. Make me think about it! Haunt me with it, haunt the reader with it after the story’s over.

Anyway. My point is, I don’t know what to get scared by. Who’s seen something in the vein of horror I’m describing? Anyone? If I can’t… get creeped out, I don’t know how I can write more. I know it’s out there. Marble Hornets is excellent… I was a big fan of the Josef K Stories… I just need that consistency. That slow burn. Can you help me find it?

Just wanted to share a link from Shannon. If you are a fan of moody horror and haven’t seen the film version of Pontypool, the BBC has done a radio drama version of the same story with the same actors. I’m listening to it and it’s arguably as good so far. It’s definitely worth the hour-long listen.

Saturday morning my friend Brendan Adkins introduced me and a group of players to Geiger Counter, a “cooperative survival horror” RPG that seemed more like group storyboarding than an actual game. I think it would be great to brainstorm a story out using Geiger Counter as a tool.

It was rooted in the mythos of Ichor Falls, and as far as Ichor Falls stories go, it actually adhered pretty well to the town. A library burned to the ground, the Amish children’s holiday Totenkinder figured heavily, and a driverless carriage that demanded a driver. It was pretty fascinating and genuinely upsetting at some points. I can see how it would be super effective late at night in the right setting. Thanks, Brendan, and the poor townspeople of Lucy, Chip, Jennifer, Katerina, Amos, Herbert and Omar.

Hello all, long time no post (no, this isn’t a meta-horror story in a blog post format). Ross over at Role Playing Public Radio informs me that:

Hi Kris,

I run a tabletop RPG podcast called Role Playing Public Radio. We do normal shows, comedy skits and recordings of our tabletop games. Back in March, I ran a two part game based on your story ‘Candle Cove’ from Ichor Falls. Even though the game ran for 6 hours, we got a great response from our listeners, judging from the comments we got. You can see it here.

Anyway, I’m a huge fan of Ichor Falls which I promoted it on RPPR episode 42.

I meant to email you to give you a heads up earlier, but I forgot to until now.

Look forward for any future creepy pasta you make!

Thanks Ross. I’m sharing the link because it’s way too late at night to begin listening to a six-hour-long descent into the (fan-generated) world of Candle Cove, but I can’t wait to hear it and see what people think.

Even as I type this on my laptop, I’m thinking about how in this dark room my eyes have adjusted to where they can only see the bright screen, and nothing beyond it. It would be so easy for a bone-white face to rush at me from the pitch-black just to the left of my monitor and then vanish.

I moved to my desk and turned on the lamp just now; I couldn’t take that chance.

The first Ichor Falls book is available for purchase at my personal shop. It includes black and white reproductions of drawings, a little photography from the Falls, and a new town legend written especially for the book.

She snapped back from the cognitive abyss she found herself staring into, something that happened far too often. It got in the way. It always did. The thick, dark air hung over her supine form, enveloped by a deafening stillness, her body cold and numb with old sweat from a receding sliver of dream.

She steadied her thoughts and concentrated. Not again, not again. There was the anticipated excruciating tensing of muscle fiber at the corners, pulling one against the other until whole striated networks of intertwined flesh stiffened like toothpicks, forcing hot blood from capillaries, sending plump cells and smoke-thin platelets cascading into arterial walls. The abyss again. How long it lasted she could never tell. She cut herself free, willed it. A sensation of electricity hit her hard, as it always did, and here came the cruel entanglement of thick black hairs, hundreds sliding against hundreds, clawing and scraping as the familiar arc of light appeared, searing her. She often thought it would be better to get struck with the harsh glare all at once, but as it was, that brilliant scalpel slid across, exposing a deep, raw swath of nerve endings that had been absolutely poised for hours waiting for this tiny, ragged white line of pain.

Lost in it for a moment. She could never feel exactly when it takes over. Back now. Helpless, she now felt a growing rush, a tremendous pressure that welled up from below, a single heartbeat reverberating within that flooded channel — even this she sensed — and mercifully the pinched, hard edges of the ducts slid open, offering a minor respite from the sensation of dry, corrugated flesh grinding against taut, throbbing sclera.

Her eyes were now open.

Less than a second had passed. Sixty thousand to go.

—

I wanted this to be really vague as far as what was happening, but I think the reader can figure it out way early. You tell me!

NetNostalgia Forum - Television (local)

mike_painter65
Subject: Candle Cove local kid’s show?

i found it and its louder than i remmber

–

Someone from the creepypasta.com thread actually put that video together! How flattering! It is legitimately scary and pretty much what I imagined that awful last episode to look like (except for the Christmas tree, anyway). Great job and I’m so thrilled.

Leighton had given up on his garden faster than he’d given up on other hobbies, pastimes, occupations, acquaintances, friends. He’d started one out of the sheer boredom of living out here, in farmland considered secluded even for the Falls. His closest neighbors seemed to glean some kind of satisfaction from tending small gardens; they were at least three miles down the narrow dirt road in either direction, which he liked. Contrasted with the depth of Leighton’s other emotions, “like” was an ocean.

This garden, if it could be called that now or ever, had yielded nothing — a few stark white shoots that dried yellow and wrinkled; countless weeds; and, in the far corner nearest the back of the house by the rusting water meter, one sad green tomato immediately beset upon by caterpillars. He ran his fingers through what was left of his gray hair, and considered pulling all the plants up, but it was a thought that had come to him many times in the past, never acted upon. Let the earth do what it will, he thought.

Leighton’s existence was both bleak and self-applied. He had had a life once, known people once. A child of a stern upbringing, he had worked as a materials scientist, a metallurgist, for an iron ore refinery up in Point Pleasant for forty-odd years, and took early retirement. He attempted to teach physics to high school students for a year or so, but he had no interest in imparting knowledge to those too stubborn to receive it.

There was something pathetic, infuriating about youth today and their parents. The people of Point Pleasant — or anywhere really. People got on Leighton’s nerves; sometimes he couldn’t understand how anyone could stand to be a part of the world.

Ichor Falls was a dim town, a gray town, which appealed to him — the locals kept to themselves, and in all the time he’d lived out here he never considered himself one of them. The mist gave him a good, cold feeling. From this distance he could barely even make out the lights of the highway.

The feeling was broken, often, by the local newspaper delivery. The man parked his truck further south where the dirt wasn’t so soft, and walked the 300 yards up to Leighton’s mailbox. He kept thinking one of these days he’d have to move it further away from the house; as it is around this time of day he tried to be inside so as to avoid small talk. But here Leighton was, standing outside staring at his garden. He set his jaw.

The delivery man waved a long wave as he came closer with a stack of ads Leighton had no interest in reading. “Morning, Leighton.”

“Morning.”

“Last stop of the day. Always good to see you — means my shift is over.” He had made this joke too many times to count.

“Just in the box, please.”

“No time for chit-chat, huh? Something you’ve gotta get back to?”

“I enjoy my solitude, and I wish you’d respect that,” Leighton said, already moving towards his front door. He stopped and turned back to the man. “And if all you have for me is advertising, then make your last stop somewhere else.”

“You want us to suspend delivery, then? I can put in the form for you, but you’ll have to sign it.”

Leighton responded by angrily slamming his front door.

This was his never-ending experience with others — no matter what steps you took to be left alone, it intruded. It persisted. Wasn’t it obvious from the way he acted, Leighton thought, what his desires were? From the company he didn’t keep? From the places he refused to live? From the state of his garden? He had a house full of journals and books to read.

What could be more simple, more easily carried out, than to leave another man completely alone?

(continue reading…)

Here’s a real town with almost the same backstory as Ichor Falls, except that it’s probably not also damned.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/30/oklahoma.toxic.town/index.html