Gutterspace

by Justine Norton-Kertson, Ahmed Raafat (Illustrator)

The chilling horror debut by Justine Norton-Kertson!



A washed-up artist in Portland, Oregon faces off against a monster that stalks its prey from between the panels of an old, forgotten comic book.



"A fast-paced novella that serves as a love letter to comic books and art, and which celebrates the weird." - A.C. Wise, Sunburst Award-winning author of Ballad of the Bone Road and Out of the Drowning Deep



With interior illustrations by Ahmed Raafat. Cover art by Chris Panatier.

Genres: Horror

138 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 13, 2026

Reviews

[unstable.books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gutterspace is a strange little nightmare that showcases exactly how unsettling it is when the boundaries of a story stop being boundaries. At the story's center is a failing artist in Portland who find himself facing something that should not exist, a monster lurking between the panels of an old comic book. From there, Norton-Kerston turns a familiar piece of nostalgia into a doorway for something way more terrifying. What makes Gutterspace work is the collision of medium and genre. The comic book is not just a creepy object sitting at the center of the story. It becomes a part of the machinery of horror. There is something uncanny about the idea that the spaces between panels might contain something not meant to be seen, and Norton-Kerston takes that concept somewhere wonderfully uncomfortable. The novella also has a surreal quality, where the reader is never entirely certain how far the nightmare will extend. Reality feels increasingly unstable, and that uncertainty gives the tale claustrophobic momentum. The deeper the protagonist gets into the mystery, the harder it becomes to distinguish between consuming a story and it consuming you. For horror readers who enjoy scares with a healthy dose of weirdness, Gutterspace delivers something refreshingly different. It has the eerie quality of discovering a piece of media that is supposedly cursed, combined with the creeping unease of realizing that whatever it contains has noticed you too. Norton-Kerston's debut is inventive and gloriously strange. Gutterspace tells us a horror story while playing with the architecture of storytelling itself, and the result is a book that leaves some horrifying images behind. Thank you Stars and Sabers Publishing for sending me a review copy. You can pick up Gutterspace October 13th, 2026 wherever you buy your books!

[Horror Haus Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The worst part of horror isn’t what happens—it’s the moment right before it happens. The slow, awful realization that it was always going to happen.”

This was such a fast paced cosmic horror novella and I’m obsessed with the cover art! (Cover designed by Chris Panatier)

I really resonated with Ezra’s frustrations about the current state of comic books, especially horror comics. As a longtime comic lover I remember being excited to find genuinely scary horror comics as a kid. Now, it sometimes feels like horror is being watered down because nobody wants anything too scary. And honestly? Ezra has a point!

This entire story feels like a fever dream from beginning to end. You can feel Ezra’s desperation as he tries to figure out what the hell is happening and the concept of something trapped in the gutter space, constantly watching and waiting is so unsettling.

Weird, frantic, and wonderfully strange. I had a great time with this one!