This story is set in a town that Ballingrud features quite a bit in his writings, the ghoul run down of Hob’s Landing. Told from a somewhat removed narrator, we watch as a daughter of the local eccentric attempts to deal with his death and past, dark obsessions. “The Diabolist,” takes what could be considered a more familiar Lovecraftian style tale, but takes a different spin. A story both of revenge, survival, and the occult. No one is truly prepared for what he ends up finding there. Featuring a rare book thief turned bookseller, he is swept up to go retrieve a book in the back bayou. “The Atlas of Hell” begins this collection and maybe one of my favorites in the collection. Few horror stories that give me goosebumps, but every single yarn managed to do just that. Yet, Ballingrud doubles down on his subtly dark prose that glides smoothly off the page and into your brain.

In some ways this collection of shorts is one of novellas, considering it contains only six stories and the book itself runs almost 300 pages on its own.

This collection also features, VISIBLE FILTH, which was made into a Hulu original movie and aired earlier this month, so be sure to not miss out on that if you can help it! I wasn’t wrong either, this collection disturbed me as much as the first, and Ballingrud doubles down on the dark fantasy horrors that made some appearances in NORTH AMERICAN LAKE MONSTERS. I almost could not wait to get to Nathan Ballingrud’s second collection, WOUNDS: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, but reading it around Halloween, felt like the best time for it.

Nathan ballingrud wounds