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Terrible Things
“Compassionate, astute and beautifully crafted, these are horror stories with soul.”Laura Mauro“Put simply, these stories are some of the very best weird fiction has to offer.”James Everington“One of our greatest contemporary writers.”Ralph Robert MooreThirteen stories in which people reach the limits of their known worlds. Stories where ghosts take many forms, where the monsters are sometimes human, sometimes not. Stories where desperate people find out what they’re capable of, and husbands and wives traveling on dark roads discover how lost they truly are. Stories where the discoveries people make come at a cost, and crossing over into the unknown can be both liberating and terrifying.
174 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 4, 2021
5 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
David Surface
29 books27 followersDavid Surface lives in the Hudson Highlands in a 160-year-old brick house that he shares with his wife, the author Julia Rust.
David is the author of These Things That Walk Behind Me, a Shirley Jackson Award-nominated collection of short stories published by Lethe Press, Terrible Things, a collection published by Black Shuck Books, and two paranormal YA mystery novels co-written with Julia Rust; Saving Thornwood and Angel Falls. His stories have appeared in Best Horror of the Year, Shadows & Tall Trees, Supernatural Tales, Nightscript, Twisted Book of Shadows, Uncertainties III, Nightmare Abbey, and other publications. He is also author of the Substack newsletter STRANGE LITTLE STORIES.
David enjoys writing, old movies, obscure bookstores, good coffee, bare trees in winter, vintage Halloween decorations, and medieval sacred music, not necessarily in that order. He also enjoys talking with other people about writing––his and theirs.
David is the author of These Things That Walk Behind Me, a Shirley Jackson Award-nominated collection of short stories published by Lethe Press, Terrible Things, a collection published by Black Shuck Books, and two paranormal YA mystery novels co-written with Julia Rust; Saving Thornwood and Angel Falls. His stories have appeared in Best Horror of the Year, Shadows & Tall Trees, Supernatural Tales, Nightscript, Twisted Book of Shadows, Uncertainties III, Nightmare Abbey, and other publications. He is also author of the Substack newsletter STRANGE LITTLE STORIES.
David enjoys writing, old movies, obscure bookstores, good coffee, bare trees in winter, vintage Halloween decorations, and medieval sacred music, not necessarily in that order. He also enjoys talking with other people about writing––his and theirs.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 8, 2020
The pages in this slim volume contain a myriad of voices, each echoing within a very human situation with a touch of the surreal. These stories contain pathos, longing and battle scars and are psychologically seasoned. Trepidation and unrest take turns in the foreground as memories, hopes and relationships slip into the driver's seat. Each story will take you to strange yet beautifully accented places. Places where nothing is everything you will ever want to be. Read this collection and let it move you to another level. Highly recommended.
March 17, 2020
It is quite possible that David Surface has experienced terrible things, but it is just as likely that he has helped, or offered comfort to, those who’ve not only witnessed terrible things, but learned to endure. “The things we do to each other that seem so big and terrible at the time don’t really matter that much in the end” — this coming from Surface’s unsettling, “Writings Found In a Red Notebook,” a story where names and mere memories are talismans against an inevitable humanitarian deterioration. “Not sure if that’s supposed to be a comforting thought or something else.”
While Surface’s work contains an incisive warmth, there is a soberly scientific calculation in his execution (it’s enjoyable observing how he provides predictive codes throughout his pieces).
I first confronted one of Surface’s stories five years ago, “The Sound That the World Makes” having appeared in the inaugural installment of C.M. Muller’s annual, autumnal exhibition, Nightscript. Two years later in 2017, Surface provided “Something You Leave Behind” to the anthology’s third volume. (Both stories appear in Surface’s collection.) In addition to demonstrating a deft handling of how details are meted out within a narrative, I now notice that the two stories contain thematic double-helices which twine much of Surface’s work — namely, how time affects the fickle nexus of friendship, and the vacillating reciprocity in our more intimate relationships; and while these ordinary topics might certainly be dismissed as too mundane for readers seeking the glee of gore, Surface’s goal, as a craftsman, eclipses gore. In Surface’s stories, he trades sloppy shock value for an almost Hippocratic ethos to ease the pain incurred by indelible damage.
As for the altering phases of relationships, we can examine a passage from that latter-referenced tale, “Something You Leave Behind,” the action centering on the unsteady union of spouses Janet and Jack. “[Janet had] noticed it before, but tonight it seemed worse, like he’d aged overnight. For a moment she believed that if she passed him on the street, she wouldn’t recognize him” — this coming as Jack divulges an unexpected confession. “‘You remember what you said, when I left? You’re not the same man I married.’ He paused and swallowed. ‘Those things I did, when I left. I used to wonder … how could I do that? How could I do those things to you? I tried to think, but there’s nothing there … like it was someone else who did those things.’” When Janet attempts to alter tack, Jack’s agitation increases. “‘No,’ he said, his voice becoming more urgent. ‘I mean … what if it was? What if it was someone else?’” The story reveals then an uneasy revelation.
The varying dynamics along friendships’ timeline also factors heavily into Surface’s fiction — think of more ominous, atmospheric interactions in the vein of The Big Chill. “Plans change — that was how Jerry put it,” comes a line in “The Sound the World Makes.” “The important thing, he said, was not to be so attached to your plans for the future that you can’t handle it when a whole different future arrives.”
In “Last Ride of the Night,” Surface captures both the ramifications of shared wounds as he animates his characters quite literally down memory lane, fog-filled as it may be. “I wanted the shock of contradiction,” his protagonist admits, “to have the flaws and falsehoods in my memory confirmed and held up to my face. I knew what I remembered and I wanted to be wrong.”
The collection’s title story calls to mind moments from T.E.D. Klein’s, “Petey,” while framing the tale with both an “altered perspective” and an anthropological detachment in the analytical mode of more contemporary writers like Matt Cardin.
Yet it is in the story “Intruders” that distills not only Surface’s skill, but partially telegraphs his literary agenda. In it, we have a teacher whose young charges are just beginning to confront the unpredictable realities of school-targeted violence. Surface’s protagonist-teacher (I’ll avoid using the term “educator,” as it both limits and misses the point of what real teachers actually do) demonstrates the growing the claustrophobia of our increasingly violent climate, while delineating the tension of this occupation’s obligations: the daily responsibility to maintain the safety of the vulnerable; the gravity of potential; and the ramifications of lost opportunity. What is vigilance?, asks Surface. What is overreaction?
It’s a compliment that the story calls to mind moments from Stephen King’s “Sometimes They Come Back,” though progresses beyond it in its all-embracing sympathies. “Don’t lie to them,” comes a particularly haunting line from the story. “They’ll know.” It’s an instruction directed at both the students in his narrative and his audience facing the page. David Surface is, even in his half-truths, being authentic.
#
Knowing very little of the man aside from the warmth and intellect reflected in his fiction — and how his aesthetic has affected me — I’ve come to gain a sense that Mr. Surface, as a writer, operates like a war-torn combat medic. As the thirteen stories in his collection, Terrible Things deftly demonstrates, in the trauma unit of tale-telling, David Surface is unable to supply too many precious answers, rather he provides verbal sutures to the damaged and heart-sick, patching us up the best he can.
While Surface’s work contains an incisive warmth, there is a soberly scientific calculation in his execution (it’s enjoyable observing how he provides predictive codes throughout his pieces).
I first confronted one of Surface’s stories five years ago, “The Sound That the World Makes” having appeared in the inaugural installment of C.M. Muller’s annual, autumnal exhibition, Nightscript. Two years later in 2017, Surface provided “Something You Leave Behind” to the anthology’s third volume. (Both stories appear in Surface’s collection.) In addition to demonstrating a deft handling of how details are meted out within a narrative, I now notice that the two stories contain thematic double-helices which twine much of Surface’s work — namely, how time affects the fickle nexus of friendship, and the vacillating reciprocity in our more intimate relationships; and while these ordinary topics might certainly be dismissed as too mundane for readers seeking the glee of gore, Surface’s goal, as a craftsman, eclipses gore. In Surface’s stories, he trades sloppy shock value for an almost Hippocratic ethos to ease the pain incurred by indelible damage.
As for the altering phases of relationships, we can examine a passage from that latter-referenced tale, “Something You Leave Behind,” the action centering on the unsteady union of spouses Janet and Jack. “[Janet had] noticed it before, but tonight it seemed worse, like he’d aged overnight. For a moment she believed that if she passed him on the street, she wouldn’t recognize him” — this coming as Jack divulges an unexpected confession. “‘You remember what you said, when I left? You’re not the same man I married.’ He paused and swallowed. ‘Those things I did, when I left. I used to wonder … how could I do that? How could I do those things to you? I tried to think, but there’s nothing there … like it was someone else who did those things.’” When Janet attempts to alter tack, Jack’s agitation increases. “‘No,’ he said, his voice becoming more urgent. ‘I mean … what if it was? What if it was someone else?’” The story reveals then an uneasy revelation.
The varying dynamics along friendships’ timeline also factors heavily into Surface’s fiction — think of more ominous, atmospheric interactions in the vein of The Big Chill. “Plans change — that was how Jerry put it,” comes a line in “The Sound the World Makes.” “The important thing, he said, was not to be so attached to your plans for the future that you can’t handle it when a whole different future arrives.”
In “Last Ride of the Night,” Surface captures both the ramifications of shared wounds as he animates his characters quite literally down memory lane, fog-filled as it may be. “I wanted the shock of contradiction,” his protagonist admits, “to have the flaws and falsehoods in my memory confirmed and held up to my face. I knew what I remembered and I wanted to be wrong.”
The collection’s title story calls to mind moments from T.E.D. Klein’s, “Petey,” while framing the tale with both an “altered perspective” and an anthropological detachment in the analytical mode of more contemporary writers like Matt Cardin.
Yet it is in the story “Intruders” that distills not only Surface’s skill, but partially telegraphs his literary agenda. In it, we have a teacher whose young charges are just beginning to confront the unpredictable realities of school-targeted violence. Surface’s protagonist-teacher (I’ll avoid using the term “educator,” as it both limits and misses the point of what real teachers actually do) demonstrates the growing the claustrophobia of our increasingly violent climate, while delineating the tension of this occupation’s obligations: the daily responsibility to maintain the safety of the vulnerable; the gravity of potential; and the ramifications of lost opportunity. What is vigilance?, asks Surface. What is overreaction?
It’s a compliment that the story calls to mind moments from Stephen King’s “Sometimes They Come Back,” though progresses beyond it in its all-embracing sympathies. “Don’t lie to them,” comes a particularly haunting line from the story. “They’ll know.” It’s an instruction directed at both the students in his narrative and his audience facing the page. David Surface is, even in his half-truths, being authentic.
#
Knowing very little of the man aside from the warmth and intellect reflected in his fiction — and how his aesthetic has affected me — I’ve come to gain a sense that Mr. Surface, as a writer, operates like a war-torn combat medic. As the thirteen stories in his collection, Terrible Things deftly demonstrates, in the trauma unit of tale-telling, David Surface is unable to supply too many precious answers, rather he provides verbal sutures to the damaged and heart-sick, patching us up the best he can.
March 27, 2020
Terrible Things is a superb collection of short stories. Subtle and understated, the crystal clear prose expertly builds a sense of unease, setting the reader up for what is often a truly disturbing denoument. Broken people litter these pages, their insecurities manifesting as ghosts both literal and metaphorical. Some of the imagery conjured up in these stories is truly terrifying, made all the more potent by the beauty of the writing.
April 10, 2020
The book really should have 3.5*s, also you should know that David Surface is a friend the the leader of my Veterans Writing Workshop, but which had nothing to do with the rating..
The stories, while probably classified as horror stories, in this world that needs to classify everything, but they are kind and gentle horror stories, that take place in rea, real life. There are 11 stories in the anthology and there are two that I thought were standouts; "faces of the missing" and "the sound that the world makes". I recommend this book to anyone that wants to be a little bit frightened by everyday lives and incidents....
The stories, while probably classified as horror stories, in this world that needs to classify everything, but they are kind and gentle horror stories, that take place in rea, real life. There are 11 stories in the anthology and there are two that I thought were standouts; "faces of the missing" and "the sound that the world makes". I recommend this book to anyone that wants to be a little bit frightened by everyday lives and incidents....
October 27, 2025
Terrible Things by David Surface is a haunting collection of short stories that digs deep into the shadows of human experience. Each story unfolds like a quiet storm measured at first, then emotionally devastating. Surface masterfully blurs the line between the supernatural and the psychological, revealing that the scariest monsters are often the ones within.
What makes this collection remarkable is its restraint. The horror doesn’t shout; it whispers. The ghosts, the grief, the unspoken guilt they all feel intimately familiar. Surface writes with elegance and empathy, crafting stories that linger in the reader’s mind long after the last page. Whether it’s the quiet unraveling of a marriage on a dark road or a desperate act that opens a door to something unspeakable, every story pulses with eerie realism.
Terrible Things isn’t just a horror collection, it’s a meditation on fear, love, and the hidden places in the human soul. Quietly chilling and beautifully written.
What makes this collection remarkable is its restraint. The horror doesn’t shout; it whispers. The ghosts, the grief, the unspoken guilt they all feel intimately familiar. Surface writes with elegance and empathy, crafting stories that linger in the reader’s mind long after the last page. Whether it’s the quiet unraveling of a marriage on a dark road or a desperate act that opens a door to something unspeakable, every story pulses with eerie realism.
Terrible Things isn’t just a horror collection, it’s a meditation on fear, love, and the hidden places in the human soul. Quietly chilling and beautifully written.
January 15, 2021
I seriously believe Surface has depths that betoken his arrival with this collection as a great weird literature writer.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
September 9, 2021
Atmospheric and unsettling, these stories are brief but memorable. Surface is adept at building tension and cultivating a sense of dread. As I read, I felt driven to keep peeking around the next corner, needing to know "what's next?"
May 7, 2022
Some deft, odd stories in here. I loved every single one of them.
May 21, 2022
The writing is pretty, but the theme of terrible, unknown fates befalling passive, indecisive characters felt tired after about 4 stories in the collection.
July 28, 2024
3.5 star rating
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews