In the spaces between faith and terror, ten stories explore what happens when authority becomes appetite.

A Victorian clerk discovers that gaslights contain pieces of the murdered. A Polish priest hunts a vampire feeding on his city's children. A girl-bride confronts demons disguised as angels in Mormon frontier darkness. Wind turbine workers hear something singing in the North Sea.The plagues of Egypt retold through Egyptian eyes.

These aren't stories that rely on jump scares or gore. They're the kind that settle in your chest and refuse to leave. The kind where the real horror isn't the supernatural?it's the systems that make people vulnerable to it. The kind where survival itself becomes resistance.

Drawing from historical contexts that span Victorian London to Communist Poland, from Mormon pioneer valleys to ancient Egypt, each story uses supernatural dread to examine how power corrupts and how doctrine can be weaponized. But more importantly, they explore how ordinary people?women, children, the marginalized?find ways to resist even when resistance seems impossible.

This is literary horror with teeth. Atmospheric terror grounded in careful research and unflinching examination of how authority operates. Stories that understand the difference between shock and genuine dread. That know the darkest horrors are the ones that claim to be holy.

For readers who want their horror literary, their terror earned, and their endings honest rather than easy. For those who appreciate Neil Gaiman's dark mythology, Stephen King's character depth, and Jordan Peele's social consciousness.

Ten stories. No easy comfort. Just the stubborn persistence of those who refuse to be consumed.

Welcome to dark heart horror.