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DARK VIGIL: ANNIHILATE
"Sometimes, justice is not found at the end of a gavel. It waits for you in the dark."
The law has limits. Morality does not. In the shadows where institutions fail and the powerful walk free, something else stirs… a reckoning that does not file appeals, does not wait for verdicts and does not forgive. DARK VIGIL is a landmark anthology from Wicked Shadow Press that plunges headlong into the most dangerous territory in modern fiction: the space between justice and vengeance, and the terrifying human beings who inhabit it.
Curated across three volumes, EXTERMINATE, ANNIHILATE and OBLITERATE, by editors Rasiika Sen and Parth Sarathi Chakraborty, this collection gathers voices from across the globe: crime writers, dark fantasy authors, horror architects, and literary provocateurs united by a single obsession. What does it mean to take justice into your own hands? And what do you become when you do?
AUTHORS OF Dark Vigil: ANNIHILATE:
Alaina Lopez, Allison Hillier, Anne-Marie Kofoed, Boris Mišić, Celeste Kerspuy, Chad Anctil, Charlotte Poitras, Daniel DiQuinzio, E. J. Werrlein, Gabriella Balcom, Gary Rubidge, Igor Antoniuk, John A. DeLaughter, JS Hopkins, Lawrence Dagstine, Louise Gillespie, M.G. Phillips, Nathan Poole Shannon, Paul Stansbury, Robb White, Scott Broadway AND Tyler Whetstone
Every story in DARK VIGIL was selected not merely for its darkness, but for the precision of its vision. These are not stories that glorify violence. They are stories that interrogate it, inhabit it and refuse to let the reader off the hook.
DARK VIGIL is not a comfortable collection. It does not offer clean heroes or tidy resolutions. Its pages across three volumes are populated by the broken, the betrayed, and the terrifyingly purposeful: veterans haunted by psychic legacies, surgeons who have traded the scalpel for something darker, ancient creatures who have decided humanity's sins have gone unanswered long enough. Lonely teenagers. Disgraced detectives. Grieving parents. Corrupt systems that look the other way and the people who refuse to.
From cyberpunk dystopias to plague-ravaged medieval towns, from fog-shrouded Balkan villages to neon-drenched future cities, from the supernatural to the achingly real, these stories share a single beating pulse: the vigilante impulse… raw, complicated and impossible to look away from.
The law has limits. Morality does not. In the shadows where institutions fail and the powerful walk free, something else stirs… a reckoning that does not file appeals, does not wait for verdicts and does not forgive. DARK VIGIL is a landmark anthology from Wicked Shadow Press that plunges headlong into the most dangerous territory in modern fiction: the space between justice and vengeance, and the terrifying human beings who inhabit it.
Curated across three volumes, EXTERMINATE, ANNIHILATE and OBLITERATE, by editors Rasiika Sen and Parth Sarathi Chakraborty, this collection gathers voices from across the globe: crime writers, dark fantasy authors, horror architects, and literary provocateurs united by a single obsession. What does it mean to take justice into your own hands? And what do you become when you do?
AUTHORS OF Dark Vigil: ANNIHILATE:
Alaina Lopez, Allison Hillier, Anne-Marie Kofoed, Boris Mišić, Celeste Kerspuy, Chad Anctil, Charlotte Poitras, Daniel DiQuinzio, E. J. Werrlein, Gabriella Balcom, Gary Rubidge, Igor Antoniuk, John A. DeLaughter, JS Hopkins, Lawrence Dagstine, Louise Gillespie, M.G. Phillips, Nathan Poole Shannon, Paul Stansbury, Robb White, Scott Broadway AND Tyler Whetstone
Every story in DARK VIGIL was selected not merely for its darkness, but for the precision of its vision. These are not stories that glorify violence. They are stories that interrogate it, inhabit it and refuse to let the reader off the hook.
DARK VIGIL is not a comfortable collection. It does not offer clean heroes or tidy resolutions. Its pages across three volumes are populated by the broken, the betrayed, and the terrifyingly purposeful: veterans haunted by psychic legacies, surgeons who have traded the scalpel for something darker, ancient creatures who have decided humanity's sins have gone unanswered long enough. Lonely teenagers. Disgraced detectives. Grieving parents. Corrupt systems that look the other way and the people who refuse to.
From cyberpunk dystopias to plague-ravaged medieval towns, from fog-shrouded Balkan villages to neon-drenched future cities, from the supernatural to the achingly real, these stories share a single beating pulse: the vigilante impulse… raw, complicated and impossible to look away from.
Paperback
Published February 25, 2026
About the author
Chad Anctil
34 books29 followersChad Anctil grew up in the fascinating little state of Rhode Island, birthplace of H.P. Lovecraft and his peculiar branch of fiction, where he found his love for reading and horror at a young age – probably too young, but that’s just how Generation X did it. He has always been creative, taking up both writing and DJing in his teenage years before joining the Navy as an electronics engineer on fast attack submarines through the 90s.
Moving from New England to various parts of California, Hawaii, and beyond gave Chad a view into strange underworlds of art and dance and literature, from technicolor electronic dance parties in abandoned warehouses to vampire poetry performance art held in graveyards, to crazed robot combat held in secret, under dark highway overpasses. Throughout these experiences he often imagined there were secret inhuman forces at play, and created detailed landscapes where the dark world of the supernatural brushed up against his own mundane world, driving his creativity and his writing.
Moving back to New England after leaving the military, Chad’s path has always struggled between his artistic desires and his desire to pay his mortgage and cover health insurance for his wife and son, so he has devoted his days to software engineering where he currently works in cybersecurity, and his nights to his art, where he is not only a writer of horror and urban fantasy, he is also a nationally recognized fire performer, flowarts instructor, DJ and more.
Chad is currently contracted with Perspective Publishing for the release of his urban fantasy crime series ‘Providence SCU’, with book one expected to be released in 2025.
Moving from New England to various parts of California, Hawaii, and beyond gave Chad a view into strange underworlds of art and dance and literature, from technicolor electronic dance parties in abandoned warehouses to vampire poetry performance art held in graveyards, to crazed robot combat held in secret, under dark highway overpasses. Throughout these experiences he often imagined there were secret inhuman forces at play, and created detailed landscapes where the dark world of the supernatural brushed up against his own mundane world, driving his creativity and his writing.
Moving back to New England after leaving the military, Chad’s path has always struggled between his artistic desires and his desire to pay his mortgage and cover health insurance for his wife and son, so he has devoted his days to software engineering where he currently works in cybersecurity, and his nights to his art, where he is not only a writer of horror and urban fantasy, he is also a nationally recognized fire performer, flowarts instructor, DJ and more.
Chad is currently contracted with Perspective Publishing for the release of his urban fantasy crime series ‘Providence SCU’, with book one expected to be released in 2025.
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