DARK COUNTY (16 page)

‘You believe that story?’ Alex said.

‘No,’ Mike said laughing. ‘It’s bullshit. The old guy was just trying to scare us.’

Chelsea shook her head.

‘Did you see his hat? And his boots? He was dressed like an old time ringmaster,’ she said.

Mike laughed.

‘Of course he was. That was why he told us the story, he knew it would freak us out,’ he said. ‘Or do you think we just saw a ghost?’

‘He said they weren’t ghosts on Halloween, he said they became flesh.’

‘And I say bullshit,’ Mike said. ‘Throw me another beer.’

Alex threw him another beer and they began to talk once more, gradually relaxing and enjoying their evening, completely unaware of the army of clowns circling the campfire from the tree line, waiting for the right moment to strike.

I hope you all enjoyed this collection of stories from the Dark County and that reading them gave you as much pleasure as writing them gave me. I made the decision that my second book would be a collection of short stories, because after spending a year or so on my debut novel I wanted to write something more varied, to explore more elements of the horror genre and more dark corners of my own imagination.

The beauty, in my opinion, of writing short stories is that it allows you to investigate a single idea, without the need for masses of exposition or subplot. Whereas writing a novel is like a quest, writing short stories is like a day trip. It has allowed me to keep the motor running while I recharge my creative battery, ready for my next novel, which I will be starting work on almost as soon as I finish writing this afterword.

One thing I have always enjoyed is when an author offers some explanation of the inspiration behind their works. So that is what I intend to do here, let you inside my mind and tell you all of the things that got the cogs whirring as it were. So please if YOU HAVE NOT READ THE STORIES YET, DON’T READ THIS! Go back and read the stories. Okay, here we go.

A Drive in the Country

For many years, and to many people, I have said that Lincolnshire would be the ideal setting for an English version of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. It has these massive flat lands and a sense of isolation. When you drive off the main roads into the really rural areas, you often see these dilapidated farms. For me it has never been hard to imagine crazed serial killers living in these places.

The kernel of this story actually came to me about twelve years ago. I wrote a script for a short film I never got around to making. In hindsight, it was a terrible and derivative piece, but the one element I always liked was the idea of a character who lures people to his home (and their imminent deaths) by jumping out in front of their cars. This was where the character of Smash came from. When I recently thought about this story I came up with something a lot more mature, and I hope frightening, than the original script.

Hoodies

Disaffected youth is a problem all over the country, but certain parts of Lincolnshire do seem to have a lot of ‘chav’ kids, who seem to enjoy intimidating other people. I have encountered some of the groups myself. Luckily, I have never been on the receiving end of violence from them, but the threat is always there, and they have made me feel uneasy in the past. This was what inspired the story. I didn’t want to completely paint them as bad, though. The character of Benton is supposed to be our eye into this world. His reasons for wanting to be part of the gang, and behave as they do, are quite understandable. When society already has made a judgment on you, why try to go against it?

Also I really wanted to put the Devil into a story, he is such an important figure in horror that I wanted use him as a character, and I thought who better to dish out justice on these thugs.

The House by the Marsh

Of all the stories in this collection, this one is probably the most personal to me, hence why the narrator is called Chris (Chris and Kit are both derivatives of Christopher). Many of the things in the story are fiction, but a lot are true. The house did exist, pretty much as it was described in the story. I did find it with my friends when I was about fifteen. I did take photographs of it, that didn’t come out, when I was doing my degree. The house was knocked down and replaced by a new house that within six months was boarded up for about three years. I have not been anywhere near it for a long time so i presume it is still there.

I wanted the story to hint at either the supernatural or mental illness being the cause of what happened in the story.

Fear and Loathing in Skeg Vegas

Anyone from Lincolnshire will have heard the term Skeg Vegas to describe our most famous seaside resort, Skegness. It is a wonderful place, with plenty to see and do, I look forward to taking my little boy on day trips there later in the year. And yet, in winter there is something very bleak about the place. I presume this to be true of all seaside towns. They are built for the summer, and in winter, they take on a ghostly quality. This is something I have explored in other stories before this, and I am sure I will explore it again in the future.

My love of Lovecraft and the Cthullu mythos is partly responsible for this story. I wanted to hint at a great, ancient race under the sea. I stopped short of describing the creatures, or even having them appear at all, as I did not want to find myself describing Cthullu; Lovecraft had already done this so well.

The incident in the story with the blue twinkling lights in the clear jelly like substance is true by the way. It happened to me one night when having a barbecue with friends on the beach. It was really weird, but strangely beautiful, and to this day I do not know what that stuff was.

Tracks

This story was the eighth story I wrote for this collection. I had realised that I did not have a ghost story (ironically, the last three all turned out to be ghost stories). Near where I live there is a railway bridge where the road goes over the tracks. One night, I was driving home on this road and my headlights illuminated a figure walking up the middle of the road about to go over the crest of the slope. As I reached that spot, I slowed down expecting this person to still be in the road, but as I went over the other side they were nowhere to be seen. I’m not saying I saw a ghost, but maybe; there were places to hide, but not many and the question as to why someone would want to hide is a subject for another horror story.

This event inspired me to write about a haunted railway bridge.

The Crows

Often when driving around the countryside you will see scarecrows in the field (surely I’m not the only one who has thought what if they are real people made to look like scarecrows? Or maybe I am). They always seem quite ineffectual to me, though, as the crows are busy munching the seeds, not giving the scarecrow a second thought. This was what gave me the idea for this story.

The character of Harper, the psychotic farmer, turned out very different than I had originally planned. I intended him to be a giant, uneducated brute, but he became an intelligent, well-spoken man, who took great care not to hurt the narrator too much and look after him in a weird way. I think this worked in the end, though, making the character and the story more disturbing.

Fear Thy Neighbour

On the road between where I live and our nearest town, there is a house. My wife and I noticed that they never have their curtains open during the day, but have them open at night. One of us, and I honestly can’t remember which, suggested they were vampires. In fact, we still refer to it as the vampire house whenever we drive past it.

This was what gave me the idea for this story. I liked the idea of vampires hiding out in the countryside. It makes more sense to me than them living in cities. I also wanted to explore the idea of child vampires, in other works they have often been portrayed as being adults permanently trapped in small bodies. I wanted to explore the idea that something about the change from human to vampire not only preserved your physical age forever, but also your mental age. Hence, the character in this story, Timmy, is frozen in a permanent state of childhood and innocence, unable to develop or learn new things.

Coffin Hall

This story was inspired by two things, really. When I was about nine or ten, I had a couple of books of ghost stories for kids. I cannot remember the name of the books, or the editor or even the publisher. Of all of the stories, I only remembered one. It was about a young boy waiting for his friend to meet him. His friend was late and it was getting dark. He heard two old women saying what a tragedy it was about a young boy being run over and killed. Assuming it was his friend, the young boy races to his friend’s house. Through the window, he sees his friend’s mother crying and assumes he was right. Then his friend also walks into the room and he, too, is crying. The young boy races home and sees his parents through the window. They are in floods of tears. The young boy goes to try and find out what is wrong, but as he tries to open the door his hand passes through the handle. He was the ghost all along.

This is an old trick, but that story really stayed with me, I was reminded of it the first time I saw ‘The Sixth Sense’, and I wanted to try and write my own version.

The other inspiration is the hall itself. Coffin Hall does not exist, but it’s based on Nocton Hall, near Lincoln. This was a family home, and then a military hospital, in fact my father was sent there while he was in the army. The house was set on fire and is now just a ruin.

What Grows in The Far Field

The idea for this story had been kicking around in my head for several years; I just could not decide on the right format to tell it in. Originally, I was going to write it as a screenplay, but realised that the story might seem stretched too thin over a feature length film. The idea reoccurred to me when I started writing this collection. As for the inspiration behind it, it was nothing more than my desire to write a science fiction/ horror story. I am very pleased with the results, though, and think that this is my favourite story in this whole book.

A Campfire Tale

What is short horror fiction? It is merely an extension of the old tradition of telling scary stories round the campfire.

The inspiration for the story comes from the fact that every Halloween my good friend Chris throws amazing parties. His mother-in-law owns some woods, and there is a cabin in the woods where it usually takes place. It is generally an excuse for a lot of nearing middle age adults to behave like children and try and scare each other. There is somewhat a tradition every year that I tell a ghost story (My first novel ‘Beneath’ was actually based on a little story I came up with for Halloween about two years ago.)

About four years ago, however, we tried something different. We went to the communal woods in town and took some friends around there. Little did they know that Chris and I had arranged for some of our friends to be wandering the woods in clown makeup. I came up with a backstory to explain this, the Sleaford Circus Massacre. On the night, however, we decided it was more believable if we offered no explanation for the clowns. The story, however, remained in my mind. When I was deciding on a final story for this collection, I wanted it to be told around a campfire. The story of the Circus Massacre came back to mind, and I thought it fitted perfectly, because let’s face it, clowns are fucking creepy!

I hope you enjoyed this section, and the stories in this collection. At some point in the future there may well be a Dark County: Volume Two. This place has more horrors in it. In fact, I think I have barely scratched the surface.

For now, though, I thank you for reading, and bid you farewell as I set off on my next quest. It’s time to start the second novel, watch this space.

Kit Tinsley

March 2013

Kit Tinsley is an English horror author. He is a fan of all things horror.

He graduated from DMU Leicester in 2002 with a BA (hons) in Media Studies and English. Since then he has spent time teaching both subjects in secondary and further education.

He has also worked on several independent films, writing a film called
Red Route
in 2007. Unfortunately, the film, which Kit also acted in, has been lost in postproduction hell since completion. 

Most recently he has worked on production of a film called
Shadows of a Strange
r, working with actors from the popular TV shows
Doctor Who
,
Rainbow
and
Torchwood
, as well as an actor who appeared in both
Batman Begins
and
The Dark Knight
. The film is being prepared for its release as we speak.

Kit is also a musician, He is lead vocalist/guitarist for a punk/folk/rock band called Dog Goblins.

He was born in Shropshire in 1978, but has lived in Lincolnshire since 1985.

He lives with his wife and their young son.

For more info, visit
kit-tinsley.com
.

The terrifying new novel

THE

WILDS

BY

KIT TINSLEY