Where Night Cowers

by Matthew M. Bartlett

A hair product's occult properties give the unsuspecting consumer more than just luxurious locks.

A rural museum's shocking exhibits explore the dark and deathly aspects of laughter.

A house travels the skies by night to find the man who long ago hid from terror in its abandoned halls.

An actor on a movie set recites a scripted incantation that summons unholy apocalypse.

An unseemly birthday party novelty turns out to be a diabolical tool of revenge.

A town's dark devotion to a dead child spells danger for unwary day trippers.

A senior citizen van takes an unexpected detour to hell.

Join Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination, as he takes you on a tour through witch-ridden Leeds, Massachusetts, through hex-haunted Hulse, Massachusetts, and beyond, to the darker precincts of existence, where the chance rotation of a radio dial leads to cosmic madness, where devils reign, where doom creeps, where fiends flourish...where night cowers.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories

230 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2022

About the author

Matthew M. Bartlett was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1970. He writes dark and strange fiction at his home in Western Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife Katie and an unknown number of cats.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

an unwholesome, wicked collection of the finest kind.  mr. bartlett is perfect at inspiring dread and putting his characters into the most unworldly of demongraphics.  i want all his books to keep deep in the rustling, sighing forest.

[Madison McSweeney]

Where Night Cowers merges the technological with the esoteric, in style as well as story. Cosmic entities recruit new followers through radio waves. A troubled man’s body is possessed by a haunted house. A woman’s death mirrors her boyfriend’s favourite children’s book that may not exist. There’s even a Hammer Horror homage with an apocalyptic twist. Bartlett’s text has an unsettling inhuman feel, like a sentient machine writing the religious manifesto of a doomsday cult.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024 reread: My landscaping job would be a lot easier if Matthew Bartlett would stop showing up at job sites disguised as the homeowners and trying to trick me into doing stupid stuff like mow the family cat. And sometimes I think it's him and call him out but it turns out this bitch is just really effing ugly and now she's mad that I accused her of being Matthew Bartlett in a wig. Hopefully re-reading all his books will assuage his vengeful mission to get me fired.

2022 review: Bartlett gets better with every book. This would make a great entry point for new readers, or a place to give him a 2nd chance if you didn't like the Flash Fiction format of his first two collections, these ones have a lot more meat on their bones.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very solid collection of dark, weird tales. Matthew M. Bartlett never disappoints.

I read a few of these in various anthologies, magazines and chapbooks where they were previously published. Varying in themes but all filled with the strange and horrifying growing sense of dread and disquiet that Matthew is known for.

[Phillip Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong 4 to 4.5.

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where Night Cowers is the newest collection from Matthew M Barlett. Many of the tales are set directly in the Leedsville universe, while others are certainly adjacent to Leedsville. This collection gives a wonderful overview of Barlett's universe, and growth as an author, since 2016.

One of the many things I find admirable about Matt's work is that he holds nothing back. He is not afraid to showcase the torment of adolescence, the inertia of middle age, or the helplessness of our twilight years and desecrate their corpses, drag their secrets into a wan, yellow light to be examine for an evening's entertainment in a forbidden theater of the grotesque. From a lost child in Mikeytown, to a lonely middle aged man seeking friendship in We Pass From View, to an aging woman in Call Me Corey, no one is safe. None of us are safe. From each other, from ourselves, or from what waits for us in the dark. Matt will make very certain to remind you of this.

I am a huge fan of the WXXT Leedsville universe, and always appreciate the stories and mysteries of it, I really enjoyed this expanded view of Matt's talent. His sense of place is always dark, dank, and full of dread, but in stories like the Two-Wheel System and Monica in the Hall of Moths we get a deeper swallow of his ability create compelling characters, to lead us down the halls of madness.

This is a fine, sinister collection, whether you are already indoctrinated into Matthew Bartlett's witch cult, or a first time visitor. Time to pay your tithe.

[Richard Beauchamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished “Where Night Cowers” by M. Bartlett and man, this is everything you could want and more from a Bartlett collection. Hallucinatory, nihilistic, but also absurd and almost comedic in some ways, Matthews style always feels like a ligottian mishmash laced with LSD and good old fashioned occult chicanery. While many of the stories are standalone, Matt does take us back to his pre-existing Leeds universe, while also taking us to new accursed New England haunts such as Hulse, a hexed place that reminds me of King’s “Derry” in some ways in that it is a town in the process of being taken off life support. Favorite tales include “Dr. 999”, which is about a *very* special hair tonic, “Deep Into The Skin”, a tale about a tattoo artist who gets an unwanted commission that will forever haunt him, and “The Long Lost Parent”, told in a hybrid epistolary style and features some well loved Leeds fixtures. 5 haunted, accursed but seemingly innocuous household item out of 5.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is always a privilege to explore Bartlett's brain