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25 Trumbulls Road
Winner of the Fall 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition This house has seen things it won't let you forget. When a new family moves in to the house at 25 Trumbulls Road, the narrator's vivid dreams of a teary-eyed, raw-smelling woman who lives beneath the floor turn chillingly real. Five years later, the house's new set of inhabitants are visited by the spectral presence of the little girl they lost. In these five tales linked by a single haunted house, the characters move through a world suspended between nightmare and loss, where the unexplainable and disquieting are fueled by ordinary grief and longing. Christopher Locke explores the ways in which our unspoken fears and everyday regrets sustain the darker heart of a home-its doorways and windows, its basements and lights-until it fills those corners of our lives with something close to terror. His stories how does a home feed on this energy, growing stronger with each new, sinister end? As compulsively readable as it is unsettling, 25 Trumbulls Road takes us to the places we're afraid to go, then leaves us at a destination where we are our most human.
23 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 25, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 20, 2021
A GHOST FROM SPOOKTOBER PAST!
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #22: Read a horror book published by an indie press
She lumbers toward me through the oiled dark, breathing hard, and all I can think is: I wonder how we’ll look when they find us.
this book is twenty-two pageslong short. and in those twenty-two pages it manages to be spookier than many books with considerably more space in which to develop their spookiness.
it’s all about the haunted house at 25 trumbulls road; each of the five chapters recounting the experiences of a different family inhabiting the residence over the years, whilst also maybe being inhabited themselves in turn.
this book is exactly what i thought Guestbook: Ghost Stories was going to be before i read it—creepy and sparse and suggestive—the kind of horror that stands behind you whispering in your ear. Guestbook: Ghost Stories is a beautiful objet and its content was occasionally unsettling, but it was almost exclusively the read-between-the-lines brand of unsettling. a lovely, disquieting book for sure, but not quite horror. with this one, even though there's ambiguity and offscreen action and plenty of gaps with things left unsaid, there’s enough context to string together the overt and the unspoken into actual horror, engaging you-the-reader in the process in a way that makes you feel affected, perhaps even a little haunted yourself.
these are the chapters:
CASE 3 (August 2000)
CASE 8 (April 2005)
CASE 22 (July 2006)
CASE 34 (September 2013)
CASE 56 (June 2018)
which of course begs the question(s) “why these five specific cases?,” and “who is recording or documenting these incidents, and why?,” and “what the hell happened between april 2005 and july 2006 to cause such an escalation of incidents?,” etc.
each of the five chapters are broken up further into segments marked exhibits; chunky paragraphs of narrative like little prose poems, which themselves include gaps; for example jumping from EXHIBIT 2 to EXHIBIT 5, occasionally including an exhibit and its number with the text redacted, pockmarking these 22 pages with lacunae whose creepy details you’re gonna have to fill in on your own.
to get you started, here's the book’s opening paragraph:
what happens in EXHIBIT #7?? hint: it, too, involves dolls and dolls are never NOT creepy.
come to my blog!
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #22: Read a horror book published by an indie press
She lumbers toward me through the oiled dark, breathing hard, and all I can think is: I wonder how we’ll look when they find us.
this book is twenty-two pages
it’s all about the haunted house at 25 trumbulls road; each of the five chapters recounting the experiences of a different family inhabiting the residence over the years, whilst also maybe being inhabited themselves in turn.
this book is exactly what i thought Guestbook: Ghost Stories was going to be before i read it—creepy and sparse and suggestive—the kind of horror that stands behind you whispering in your ear. Guestbook: Ghost Stories is a beautiful objet and its content was occasionally unsettling, but it was almost exclusively the read-between-the-lines brand of unsettling. a lovely, disquieting book for sure, but not quite horror. with this one, even though there's ambiguity and offscreen action and plenty of gaps with things left unsaid, there’s enough context to string together the overt and the unspoken into actual horror, engaging you-the-reader in the process in a way that makes you feel affected, perhaps even a little haunted yourself.
these are the chapters:
CASE 3 (August 2000)
CASE 8 (April 2005)
CASE 22 (July 2006)
CASE 34 (September 2013)
CASE 56 (June 2018)
which of course begs the question(s) “why these five specific cases?,” and “who is recording or documenting these incidents, and why?,” and “what the hell happened between april 2005 and july 2006 to cause such an escalation of incidents?,” etc.
each of the five chapters are broken up further into segments marked exhibits; chunky paragraphs of narrative like little prose poems, which themselves include gaps; for example jumping from EXHIBIT 2 to EXHIBIT 5, occasionally including an exhibit and its number with the text redacted, pockmarking these 22 pages with lacunae whose creepy details you’re gonna have to fill in on your own.
to get you started, here's the book’s opening paragraph:
EXHIBIT #1 The first night in our new house, I had a dream about a woman who lived under the floor. She smelled raw and cried as she pulled her body between the wide pine planks. I wanted to help her but felt that would be rude somehow. She quieted when she took me outside the house, which miraculously looked exactly like the one we just moved into; our real cars were in the driveway, my real cat was silhouetted in the upstairs window, licking its paw. She brought me into the nearby woods and seated me atop a stump. I watched as she shuffled around a great, gnarled apple tree, humming, dragging her damaged feet. She stopped abruptly and turned toward me, opening her mouth wide. When I woke up, I felt unusual, almost heartsick. The morning was glorious, and my daughter Sophie asked me to join her outside after breakfast to explore our new neighborhood. We went into the woods, discovered an abandoned doll house with three little beds, each bed holding only the head of a doll, nothing more. We kept going, pushing at brambles and dead pine, until we happened upon an apple tree. Around the base of the tree was a muddy, worn path. I felt the blood leave my face, and I could hear music not far off.
what happens in EXHIBIT #7?? hint: it, too, involves dolls and dolls are never NOT creepy.
come to my blog!
March 9, 2020
Christopher Locke, in this slender twenty-one page collection of short horror stories, manages to conjure more chilling moments than Stephen King does in four hundred. Headless dolls, ominous notebooks, ghostly beings who live under the floor, and a man alone in the house with his sick child who hears the kitchen chairs "stutter across the linoleum, as if someone were sitting down to eat."
Only a few short tales remain of those who tried to live at 25 Trumbulls Road, and they are filled with unnerving, disquieting moments . . . miniature testaments of the damned.
Only a few short tales remain of those who tried to live at 25 Trumbulls Road, and they are filled with unnerving, disquieting moments . . . miniature testaments of the damned.
October 30, 2020
Don't let this little chapbook fool you. It's the creepiest little thing I've read in a long while. I'm off to read something else so it's not the last thing I'm thinking of as I drift off to sleep tonight.
Don't believe me? Listen as the author reads an excerpt here: https://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot....
Don't believe me? Listen as the author reads an excerpt here: https://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot....
July 21, 2020
Short stories are sometimes really powerful precisely because of the things they don't manage to say. The omission can have a higher impact than inclusion; especially in genres that deal in suspense and dread, such as this horror.
In a way, it reminded me of Lullaby for a Lost World, since this is what I felt when reading it, as well: a deep curiosity for the things not said.
Reading this, you're haunted not just by the facts, but by what is missing. How did it come to the moment we're reading now? What about the other moments not mentioned? (A feeling highlighted by the fact that 'cases' are numbered and we're clearly just getting a sparse few of them, judging by the numbers). I hope the author will develop the stories further at some point, but even if they don't, it's still a beautiful exploration of what (a few) words can do.
In a way, it reminded me of Lullaby for a Lost World, since this is what I felt when reading it, as well: a deep curiosity for the things not said.
Reading this, you're haunted not just by the facts, but by what is missing. How did it come to the moment we're reading now? What about the other moments not mentioned? (A feeling highlighted by the fact that 'cases' are numbered and we're clearly just getting a sparse few of them, judging by the numbers). I hope the author will develop the stories further at some point, but even if they don't, it's still a beautiful exploration of what (a few) words can do.
March 14, 2020
Well I guess I really didn't need to sleep tonight.
I don't know if it's a real genre but this is "literary horror" if I ever read it; beautiful stories that will sit in your psyche just waiting for you to relax...
The big question in this book is where are the other "cases??!" What are the other "exhibits?!" The things absent from this work are just as frightening as those we're given.
Who knew 24 pages could do this much damage? Can't wait to read it again.
I don't know if it's a real genre but this is "literary horror" if I ever read it; beautiful stories that will sit in your psyche just waiting for you to relax...
The big question in this book is where are the other "cases??!" What are the other "exhibits?!" The things absent from this work are just as frightening as those we're given.
Who knew 24 pages could do this much damage? Can't wait to read it again.
October 19, 2022
Short and sweet! The perfect spooky book for spooky season!
February 10, 2021
This reminds of a literary Eraserhead: vignettes of hetero families with children and a veneer of satisfaction in finding a cute, homey home by some picturesque woods, until it falls apart. I'm not usually a horror reader, so I was focused on the form. The episodes of haunting are presented as "cases," bringing to mind both psychiatric case files and murder/criminal cases. Then those episodes are further broken down, as though they are part of a larger documentation, into "exhibits," again, pointing to a legal proceeding or...? The times that this form is emphasized is when a few numbered exhibits are "redacted," as though they are too horrific to print. I loved these Hitchcockian gestures to imagining something worse that horned pigs and a grove of apple trees. The caesuras, for me, seemed to point to a larger narrative than "just" ghost stories, suggesting ways in which our subjective experience becomes documented and analyzed in officialdom. Who has recorded these intensely subjective memories of presumably murdered people? Other ghosts?
March 19, 2020
Excellent. A slim volume of literary horror from Christopher Locke & Black Lawrence Press. Lovers of ghosts and creepy dolls, let these short tales of domestic doom lull you to sleep.
August 23, 2022
I would not like to live in this house. No mint tea would make it worth my while. "Look, I'm just trying to help you figure out why your wife looks like she fell face-first into a rosebush." Spooky chapbook nominated for a 2022 Elgin Award.
June 23, 2022
Masterfully eerie, a series of disturbing and uncanny tales with literary sensitivities and poetic depth.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews