Shadow
House: A Writer’s Retreat
Carl
E. Reed
Anything for the book.
—Horror writer Kurt Machen
Flensed-flesh boy crawls out the wall
& stutter-steps to my desk
with shattered skull & ghastly grin—
iron bands my chest.
Bereft of breath, cold sweat breaks out
upon my ashen brow;
I struggle to speak—head whirling, weak
last thought: Ghost, why now?
Unspeakable horror of Shadow House:
the dead entombed in the walls.
I sought out a Gothic atmosphere;
I stutter-step down the hall.
Carl E. Reed is currently employed as a roofing
operations
specialist at a window, siding, and door company just outside Chicago. Former
jobs include: U.S. marine, long-haul trucker, stage actor, cab driver,
construction worker, and door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. His poetry has
been published in The Iconoclast, Spectral Realms, Black
Petals, & Deathlehem: Holiday Horrors; short stories in Black
Gate, newWitch, Sci-Fi Lampoon, Penumbra and
elsewhere. He is a member of Frank Coffman’s Weird Poets Society. A collection
of his short stories and poetry will be released by a major weird tales publisher
in late 2023.
