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Within Wet Walls
Within Wet Walls is a short, gothic ghost story inspired by M.R. James, Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.
It speaks of a medieval manor built in a Sussex forest where beings as old as the land itself swirl, translucent in the damp mists. Ever hungry.
Travel through time within the wet walls of Wealdstone House. Slip into Eliza Lundy's Victorian sub-existence of servitude and debauchery, laced with opium and absinthe. Taste the terror. Embrace life... while you can.
Eliza's wandering spirit will take you by the hand, by the throat, by the lips. Enter her darkness to discover the beautiful horrors that reside there. She's waiting. She's always waiting. For you.
It speaks of a medieval manor built in a Sussex forest where beings as old as the land itself swirl, translucent in the damp mists. Ever hungry.
Travel through time within the wet walls of Wealdstone House. Slip into Eliza Lundy's Victorian sub-existence of servitude and debauchery, laced with opium and absinthe. Taste the terror. Embrace life... while you can.
Eliza's wandering spirit will take you by the hand, by the throat, by the lips. Enter her darkness to discover the beautiful horrors that reside there. She's waiting. She's always waiting. For you.
- GenresFiction
30 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 31, 2014
3 people want to read
About the author
Lily Childs
29 books65 followersLily Childs... writes dark fiction, horror and chilling mysteries. She is currently completing her first novel, a supernatural asylum thriller set in the south of England.
Her gothic horrors, ghost stories and crime tales have been published in anthologies, most recently: The House of Three: a Short Story (Ganglion Press), The Twistweaver’s Son in The Demonologia Biblica (Western Legends Publishing), The Ossillatrice Shift in Bones (James Ward Kirk Fiction), Strange Tastes in Fresh Fear (James Ward Kirk Fiction), Girl Don’t Come in Thirteen (Soul Bay Press), Rapture in The Bestiarum Vocabulum (Western Legends Publishing) and Bad Exposure in Phobophobias 2 (Western Legends Publishing)
Cabaret of Dread: a Horror Compendium (2012) is a gathering of Lily’s terrifying tales, and a selection of her poems was published in Courting Demons - A Collection Of Dark Verse in 2011. Lily is also author of the Magenta Shaman dark urban fantasy, short story series. Her psychological crime thriller Carpaccio was nominated for a Spinetingler Award in 2011. She is a member of The British Fantasy Society and former Horror Editor at Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers e-zine.
Blog: The Feardom http://lilychildsfeardom.blogspot.com
Twitter @LilyChilds and Facebook.com/LilyChildsFeardom
Her gothic horrors, ghost stories and crime tales have been published in anthologies, most recently: The House of Three: a Short Story (Ganglion Press), The Twistweaver’s Son in The Demonologia Biblica (Western Legends Publishing), The Ossillatrice Shift in Bones (James Ward Kirk Fiction), Strange Tastes in Fresh Fear (James Ward Kirk Fiction), Girl Don’t Come in Thirteen (Soul Bay Press), Rapture in The Bestiarum Vocabulum (Western Legends Publishing) and Bad Exposure in Phobophobias 2 (Western Legends Publishing)
Cabaret of Dread: a Horror Compendium (2012) is a gathering of Lily’s terrifying tales, and a selection of her poems was published in Courting Demons - A Collection Of Dark Verse in 2011. Lily is also author of the Magenta Shaman dark urban fantasy, short story series. Her psychological crime thriller Carpaccio was nominated for a Spinetingler Award in 2011. She is a member of The British Fantasy Society and former Horror Editor at Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers e-zine.
Blog: The Feardom http://lilychildsfeardom.blogspot.com
Twitter @LilyChilds and Facebook.com/LilyChildsFeardom
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 9, 2014
The blurb suggests Within Wet Walls was inspired by M.R. James and Dickens. While I agree with these comparisons I was also reminded of ‘The House on Rue Chartres’ by Richard A. Lupoff and Lisa Mannetti’s best work. Of course the style is the author’s own, devised and honed over the years as a writer and her work as editor on February Femmes Fatales, Thrills, Kills and Chaos and Ganglion Press. Lily Childs may finally be be on the point of her own literary breakthrough and may look back one day to recognize this publication as the catalyst of that turning point.
Magenta-Shaman-cover-final
When you travel with Lundy you’ll be blindfolded with fear as you come closer to the manor. The recesses of cruelty seep through the walls of Wealdstone House falling in pools of horror and desire. The water ripples with the hum of a song. The melody twists through nearby woods leaving stains of music hanging from winter branches. A route that leads you to a story of another age. If you choose to follow the whispered aria make sure you wrap up warm because Lily Childs types with fingers of ice that refuse to melt even when they dig into your subconscious mind.
The book is a quick trip at only 30 pages long; compact for effect and easy to read in one short sitting. A perfect fireside read for these cold and windy nights, or by candlelight at Christmas.
Full review available here- http://goo.gl/ovvi6x
Magenta-Shaman-cover-final
When you travel with Lundy you’ll be blindfolded with fear as you come closer to the manor. The recesses of cruelty seep through the walls of Wealdstone House falling in pools of horror and desire. The water ripples with the hum of a song. The melody twists through nearby woods leaving stains of music hanging from winter branches. A route that leads you to a story of another age. If you choose to follow the whispered aria make sure you wrap up warm because Lily Childs types with fingers of ice that refuse to melt even when they dig into your subconscious mind.
The book is a quick trip at only 30 pages long; compact for effect and easy to read in one short sitting. A perfect fireside read for these cold and windy nights, or by candlelight at Christmas.
Full review available here- http://goo.gl/ovvi6x
November 24, 2014
Lily Childs shows once again why she is the Queen of horror/urban fantasy. Within Wet Walls is a wonderfully crafted story... dark and dripping with erotica... necrotica... fantasy... a thirsting for life at all costs... told only as Lily can. Within Wet Walls is a stunning tapestry of death, desire, drugs and disrepute... woven from the rich fabric of Lily's ever fertile imagination.
Wealdstone is a stately old manor of indeterminate age... weathering through seasons of repute and seasons of disrepute, but one thing remains constant...
The dark secrets that lie within the walls of Wealdstone. The dark, deadly secrets. The creatures... the spirits... that roam the rooms and corridors of the old manor. The beings... living but long dead that become the 'life blood' for those dark secrets whose 'lives' are measured not in hours and days, but seasons... seasons of man.
Beings who 'live' in the exquisiteness of death. Beings who 'taste the terror' of their....
Oh, but let's not be spoiling it here, eh?
No other writer I know holds a candle to Lily when it comes to telling a tale guaranteed to leave one stifling a scream... sleeping, albeit a most restless sleep, with a night light on for nights on end... and the echo of her words remaining long, long after the last page is turned and the cover closed.
Brava, Lily... Brava!
Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw
(writing under a large mushroom, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest)
Wealdstone is a stately old manor of indeterminate age... weathering through seasons of repute and seasons of disrepute, but one thing remains constant...
The dark secrets that lie within the walls of Wealdstone. The dark, deadly secrets. The creatures... the spirits... that roam the rooms and corridors of the old manor. The beings... living but long dead that become the 'life blood' for those dark secrets whose 'lives' are measured not in hours and days, but seasons... seasons of man.
Beings who 'live' in the exquisiteness of death. Beings who 'taste the terror' of their....
Oh, but let's not be spoiling it here, eh?
No other writer I know holds a candle to Lily when it comes to telling a tale guaranteed to leave one stifling a scream... sleeping, albeit a most restless sleep, with a night light on for nights on end... and the echo of her words remaining long, long after the last page is turned and the cover closed.
Brava, Lily... Brava!
Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw
(writing under a large mushroom, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest)
November 10, 2014
Within Wet Walls by Lily Childs.
A tale of the gothic, erotic and occasionally necrotic from Sussex-born horror writer Lily Childs that sets out an evocative, deeply textured, world. The back-blurb cites influences as James, Dickens and Scott, but for me at least, it was reminiscent of Le Fanu in its vision of ethereal and deadly decadence.
Within Wet Walls follows the decline of Wealdstone House from a debauched, absinthe raddled family pile, to a crumbling ruin. The world that Wealdstone has become is a dangerous place, inhabited by voracious other-wordly beings, who are intent on sucking not just flesh from bones but the very spirit from your dying breath. To say more would give away far too much away.
A thoroughly enthralling and spine-chilling read!
A tale of the gothic, erotic and occasionally necrotic from Sussex-born horror writer Lily Childs that sets out an evocative, deeply textured, world. The back-blurb cites influences as James, Dickens and Scott, but for me at least, it was reminiscent of Le Fanu in its vision of ethereal and deadly decadence.
Within Wet Walls follows the decline of Wealdstone House from a debauched, absinthe raddled family pile, to a crumbling ruin. The world that Wealdstone has become is a dangerous place, inhabited by voracious other-wordly beings, who are intent on sucking not just flesh from bones but the very spirit from your dying breath. To say more would give away far too much away.
A thoroughly enthralling and spine-chilling read!
July 27, 2021
"Within Wet Walls" è un racconto breve assolutamente delizioso. Apre nuove frontiere alla letteratura horror? Persino io che non me ne intendo so dire di no. Ripropone con gusto e finezza temi e motivi tradizionali? Hai voglia. Fa saltare sulla sedia? No e meno male, perché è l'horror dei burini. Ti inebria con un'atmosfera densa quanto il profumo di una stanza signorile in penombra? Profondamente. Alla fine si rilegge più volte l'ultimo paragrafo, perché non si riesce a spezzare la potente malìa? Sì, e non si può chiedere di meglio.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews